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HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW  YORK 


THE  SEEN  AND  UNSEEN 

AT 

STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

H  ffantasg 


BY 

W.  D.  HOWELLS 


HARPER   <5^   BROTHERS   PUBLISHERS 
NEW  YORK   AND   LONDON 

MCMXIV 


COPYRIGHT,    1914.    BY   HARPER   ft    BROTHERS 

PRINTED   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES   OF  AMERICA 

PUBLISHED     MAY,     1914 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

AT 

STRATFORD-ON-AVON 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

AT 

STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

CHAPTER   I 

WE  lingered  amidst  the  pleasant  avenues  and  cres 
cents  of  Cheltenham,  chiefly  taken  with  the  stately  old- 
fashioned  Parade,  where,  overlooking  a  Roman  foun 
tain,  we  found  an  American  roof -garden.  That  is,  it 
called  itself  a  roof-garden,  but  it  was  silent  about  being 
American,  and  was  really  a  canopied  tea-room,  only  one 
flight  up  from  the  sidewalk  instead  of  twenty  stories;  the 
fountain  did  not  say  it  was  Roman,  but  it  was  of  a  lavish 
spilth,  and  tumbled  over  marble  shelves  among  mytho 
logical  men  and  beasts,  and  so  was  Roman  enough  for  us. 
A  pleasant  wind  lifted  the  leaves  up  and  down  the  Parade, 
where  we  did  not  mind  the  repair  of  the  roadway  going 
on  with  stone-breakers  breaking  stone,  and  a  steam 
roller  steam-rolling  the  pieces  into  a  tarry  bed.  We  could 
go  away  from  the  roof-garden  tea-room  when  we  liked, 
and  walk  or  drive  among  the  lawned  and  embowered 
mansions  and  lodges  and  villas,  and  educational  establish 
ments  for  both  sexes,  and  think  of  our  last  King,  our  poor 
George  the  Third,  who,  though  he  alienated  our  affections, 
discovered  the  virtues  of  the  medicinal  waters  of  Chelten 
ham,  and  established  the  pleasant  resort  in  a  favor  long 

I 


THE   SEEN   AND   UNSEEN 

since  faded,  but  all  the  fitter  for  the  retired  Indian  officers 
who  now  mostly  dwell  there,  and  apter  to  their  strictly 
measured  means.  We  did  not  personally  verify  the  fact 
of  their  residence,  for  they  were  away  on  their  holidays, 
as  Englishmen  always  are  at  the  beginning  of  August; 
but  there  were  the  large  handsome  houses  of  Georgian 
architecture,  and  we  easily  persuaded  ourselves  that 
they  lived  in  these  when  they  were  at  home. 

In  other  words,  we  were  so  glad  of  Cheltenham  by  day 
and  by  night  that  we  doubted  very  much  whether  we 
should  hurry  on  to  Stratford-on-Avon  for  the  Shake 
spearean  Festivals,  held  there  throughout  the  month,  on 
the  brink  of  whose  Bank  Holiday  we  trembled.  It  seemed 
to  us  that  we  could  do  much  better  staying  in  Cheltenham, 
say  a  fortnight,  with  that  Roman  fountain  and  American 
roof-garden  for  our  solace  every  day,  and  then  go  to 
Stratford;  and  the  very  last  night  of  our  stay  we  almost 
thought  we  should  spend  our  whole  August  there,  running 
over  to  Stratford  for  certain  plays  and  coming  back. 
What  brought  us  to  this  conditional  decision  was  our 
pleasure  in  the  open-air  performance  of  "A  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream"  in  the  park  under  the  stars  and  the  stir 
of  leaves  overhead,  with  the  fine  shiver  of  the  natural  and 
artificial  bushes  which  the  actors  went  and  came  through. 
They  were  very  good  actors,  or  at  least  as  good  as  we 
deserved,  both  men  and  women;  and  the  children  that 
danced  bare-legged  and  gauze-winged  as  fairies  were 
adorable  in  that  moment  when  the  lovely  English  children 
are  hesitating  about  growing  plainer  instead  of  simply 
growing  older.  We  spectators  were  not  in  multitude, 
but  we  were  fairly  many,  and  we  seemed  to  be  fairly  good 
society.  We  were  very  willing  to  be  pleased  with  the 
playing,  and  we  clapped  handsomely  at  any  chance,  and 
so  almost  unanimously  that  I  was  a  little  vexed  by  the 
reticence  of  two  gentlemen  who  sat  directly  in  front  of 

2 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

us  and  whom  I  was  disposed  to  wish  away  at  first.  But 
as  the  time  passed  I  forgot  my  grievance  with  them,  if  it 
was  a  grievance,  and  began  to  be  interested  in  their 
peculiar  interest  in  the  performance,  which  they  did  not 
hide  from  me  so  much  as  I  expected.  They  were  of 
fairly  good  height,  but  one  was  much  bulkier  than  the 
other  and  he  seemed  somehow  of  a  cheerfuler  make, 
though  I  imagined  this  rather  from  his  carriage  than 
from  any  expression  of  his  face,  which,  in  fact,  I  could 
not  see  at  once.  They  both  wore,  or  appeared  to  wear, 
the  fashions  of  a  West  End  tailor;  they  had  on  very-well- 
cut  lounge  suits,  such  as  Englishmen  almost  live  in  when 
they  are  not  on  social  duty  and  may  indulge  themselves 
in  the  excess  of  informality  which  the  most  formal  of 
nations  then  likes  to  abandon  itself  to.  But  as  the  time 
passed  their  dress  seemed  to  change,  in  a  manner  I  hardly 
know  how  to  describe,  to  something  not  old-fashioned  but 
out-fashioned.  Broad  flat  collars  grew  about  their  necks 
in  place  of  the  limp  turn-down  outing  affairs  they  had 
worn;  their  jackets  were  replaced  by  slashed  doublets 
of  velvet;  their  trousers,  slightly  pegtop,  turned  to  trunk 
hose.  But  what  was  more  puzzling  was  an  effect  of 
luminous  transparency  which  their  persons  now  presented. 
I  found  that  so  far  from  incommoding  me  by  their  inter 
position  between  me  and  the  play,  I  could  see  it  none  the 
worse  but  all  the  better  for  their  presence,  just  as  I  could 
hear  the  actors  more  clearly,  or  more  intelligently,  for  the 
talk  which  the  two  kept  up  pretty  constantly.  I  cannot 
yet  quite  account  for  this  curious  fact  (whether  it  was  an 
illusion  or  not,  I  hope  it  remains  a  fact  of  my  experience) 
and  I  give  it  to  the  reader  for  what  it  is  worth.  They 
sat  rather  silently  through  the  opening  passages  of  the 
play,  where  the  lovers  were  having  their  misadventures 
contrived  for  them,  but  became  restive,  both  of  them,  in 

that  long,  long  scene  where  Bottom  and  Snug  and  Starve- 

3 


THE   SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

ling  and  their  brother  mechanicals  tediously  rehearse 
their  parts  for  the  interlude  which  they  are  to  play  before 
the  Duke. 

At  the  end  of  it  the  slighter  of  my  neighbors  leaned 
toward  the  other  and  said,  "It  always  seemed  to  me  that 
this  was  one  of  the  places  where  you  fell  down." 

"I  know,"  the  stout  gentleman  acknowledged.  "But," 
he  said,  "it  always  got  a  laugh." 

"From  the  groundlings." 

"From  her  Grace  herself." 

"The  taste  of  her  Grace  was  not  always  to  be  trusted. 
In  matters  of  humor,  of  fun,  it  was  a  little  gross,  no? 
A  little  rank?" 

"She  certainly  had  a  gust  for  the  high -flavored  in 
anecdote;  but  I  don't  know  that  this  scene  is  exactly 
of  that  sort.  Coom  to  think  of  it,  Oi — " 

11  Coom?    Oi?"  the  other  challenged. 

"Come  and  7,  Oi  mane"  the  stout  gentleman  owned 
with  a  laugh.  "I  do  forget  my  London  accent  mostly, 
now  that  I've  got  permanently  back  to  my  Warwickshire; 
it's  so  easy;  after  a  language  a  dialect  is  like  slippers  after 
tight  shoes.  But  what  I  mane — mean — is  that  I  think 
these  mechanicals  are  fairly  decent;  much  more  than  they 
would  have  been  in  life.  Her  Grace  would  have  relished 
what  they  would  really  have  said,  with  the  loves  of 
Pyramus  and  Thisbe  for  a  theme,  if  I  had  let  them  give 
way  to  their  sprightly  fancy  without  restraint;  they  had 
to  be  held  up  with  a  strong  hand  at  times."  The  com 
fortable  gentleman  laughed  with  a  pleasure  his  companion 
apparently  did  not  share,  though,  I  fancied,  less  from  a 
hurt  moral  sense  than  from  a  natural  gravity. 

"I  never  liked  your  bringing  such  fellows  in  as  you  often 
were  doing.  They  are  beneath  the  dignity  of  the  drama. 
If  you  had  taken  my  advice  you  would  certainly  have  left 
the  Gravedigger  out  of  ' Hamlet';  and  your  Touchstone 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

and  Audrey — I  suppose  you'll  say  they  always  got  a 
laugh,  too.  And  that  fat  rascal  Falstaff,  and  that  drunken 
Bardolph,  and  that  swaggering  blackguard  Pistol — I 
never  could  suffer  them,  though  I  suffered  enough  from 
them."  He  laughed  as  at  a  neat  point  he  had  made, 
and  then  lapsed  into  what  appeared  a  habit  of  mel 
ancholy. 

"I  won't  save  myself  from  you  behind  Nature's  farthin 
gale,"  the  other  said,  gently,  "and  I'll  own  that  these 
fellows  here  are  not  so  amusing  as  I  once  thought  them. 
The  fashion  of  fun  changes.  I've  heard  that  Mark  Twain 
used  to  say  my  humor  made  him  want  to  cry;  perhaps  in 
a  century  or  two  I  shall  have  my  revenge.  But  now, 
this  scene  of  Hermia  and  Helena  and  their  lovers  in  the 
forest  here, ,  I  call  that  rather  nice — their  jealous  fury, 
I  mean;  it  has  its  pathos,  too,  I  think." 

"I  don't  deny  it,"  the  gloomier  gentleman  said.  "But 
I'm  not  sure  I  like  the  passions  painted  quite  so  nakedly. 
I  should  have  preferred  a  more  veiled  presentment  of 
these  ladies'  hate  as  well  as  love.  But  it's  good,  very  good, 
very  good  indeed;  or,  as  we  used  to  say,  very  excellent 
good.  Ah!  That  was  well  done  of  Hermia!" 

"Yes,"  the  stout  gentleman  sighed,  acquiescing,  "I 
never  saw  it  done  quite  so  well  in  my  timej  when  we  had 
boys  for  the  part." 

He  put  a  certain  stress  on  the  word  time,  as  playing 
upon  it,  and  the  other  returned  in  like  humor:  "Yes; 
eternity  has  its  compensations,  and  actresses  are  of  them, 
though  one  wouldn't  always  think  so.  They're  certainly 
better  than  those  beardless  boys  of  your  time." 

The  stout  gentleman  laughed  dutifully,  and  the  two 
went  on  concurrently  with  the  play  in  their  talk. 

The  play  was  a  good  deal  cut,  as  I  thought  to  its  ad 
vantage,  and  I  began  to  hope  we  should  escape  the  scene 

of  Pyramus  and  Thisbe:  it  did  seem  too  much  to  have 

5 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

it  after  the  rehearsal;  and  the  rest  was  so  charming. 
But  we  were  not  to  escape  so  lightly.  Bottom  and  the 
rest  came  on  in  due  course,  and  I  wondered  how  I  should 
live  through  the  joke.  Suddenly  I  started,  as  if  from 
sleep,  and  found  that  I  really  had  been  drowsing. 

This  will  not  seem  so  incredible  if  I  allege  that  not 
very  long  before  I  had  slept  through  a  seance  at  the 
dentist's  in  Boston,  while  he  filled  a  tooth  for  me  with 
the  delicate  skill  of  American  dentists.  Any  one  who  can 
believe  this  will  not  doubt  that  I  was  saved  from  that 
tedious  scene  by  Nature's  anesthetic,  and  that  I  stood 
up  greatly  refreshed,  as  if  the  operation  had  been  entirely 
successful. 

The  wind  that  was  still  lightly  fingering  the  leaves 
seemed  to  have  grown  a  little  chillier,  and  a  thin  cloud 
had  blown  over  the  stars.  The  people  were  streaming 
away  from  the  seats;  the  scene  looked  all  the  emptier  for 
the  want  of  a  curtain  to  hide  its  hollowness. 

"Did  you  notice  what  became  of  those  two  men  in 
front  of  us?"  I  asked.  "Or  which  way  they  went?" 

"What  two  men  in  front  of  us?"  it  was  replied;  and 
I  began  to  think  I  had  invented  them  in  the  swift  dream 
I  must  have  had  during  my  life-saving  nap.  I  suppose  the 
reader  has  guessed  at  the  identity  of  one  of  them,  and  I 
could  have  done  so  myself  if  I  had  not  been  rigidly  prin 
cipled  against  ever  guessing  in  England  about  anything; 
it  so  unmistakably  marks  you  for  an  American,  and  if  you 
are  trying  to  pass  for  English  it  is  so  defeating. 

I  said  no  more  about  the  strange  companions,  but  I 
declared  that  while  I  appeared  to  have  been  sleeping 
(as  I  was  now  promptly  accused  of  doing)  I  had  been 
thinking  the  whole  problem  over,  and  had  decided  that 
we  had  better  not  try  to  do  the  August  rites  of  Stratford- 
on-Avon  from  Cheltenham,  but  go  at  once  and  settle  in 

that  town,  and  seize  whatever  advantages  propinquity 

6 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

offered  for  enjoyment.  As  nobody  objected  I  began  to 
have  some  doubts  of  my  decision;  but  after  rather  a  poor 
night,  and  some  very  disappointing  coffee  at  breakfast, 
I  held  firmly  to  it.  I  was  all  the  firmer  in  it  when  I  found 
that  the  head  porter  at  our  hotel  had  sent  us  to  the 
station  to  take  a  train  which  did  not  go;  I  then  felt  that 
we  must  leave  Cheltenham,  even  if  it  was  not  for  Stratford. 
The  railway  porter  who  labeled  our  baggage  for  Stratford 
said  that  the  first  train  leaving  before  five-forty  'was  a 
motor-train,  which  left  at  three-thirty.  I  tried  to  make 
him  tell  me  what  a  motor-train  was,  and  he  did  his  best, 
but  fell  back  upon  a  solid  ground  of  fact  in  assuring  me 
that  I  should  see. 


THE   SEEN    AND   UNSEEN 


CHAPTER  II 

WHEN  I  did  see  the  motor-train  I  was  richly  content 
with  it,  and  more  content  as  time  (a  good  deal  of  time) 
went  on.  The  train  was  formed  of  one  long  car,  with 
a  smoking  and  a  baggage  compartment  at  the  forward 
end,  the  rest  opening  airily  into  a  saloon  with  seats 
on  each  side,  as  in  our  pleasant  day-coaches  at  home. 
We  had  tried  in  vain  to  buy  first-class  tickets,  and  now 
we  had  all  this  delight  at  third-class  rates,  which  alone  are 
recognized  on  motor-trains.  We  slipped  sleekly  out  of 
Cheltenham,  which  tried  to  detain  us  at  two  suburban 
stations  (halts,  such  stops  are  called  on  the  motor  route), 
and  sleekly  ran  through  the  grain-fields  and  meadow-lands 
and  broad-bean  patches,  where  the  yellowing  wheat  stood 
dense,  hanging  its  blond  heads,  and  the  haycocks  covered 
the  ground  almost  as  thickly  as  the  unfallen  stems,  and  the 
lentils  blackened  in  innumerable  sheaves,  and  all  the 
landscape  stretched  away  in  dreamy  levels  to  a  low  hori 
zon,  where  the  afternoon  hid  them  in  its  mellow  mists. 
There  were  so  few  people  in  the  car  that  we  could  change 
from  side  to  side  and  seat  to  seat,  and  when  we  had  done 
with  the  landscape  we  could  give  ourselves  to  conjecture 
of  our  fellow-passengers.  Two  of  these  were  ladies,  each 
reading  a  copy  of  The  Nation  (the  London,  not  the  New 
York  one),  and  I  tried  my  best  to  make  out  from  it  who 
and  what  they  were,  but  I  had  arrived  at  no  more  than 
the  conclusion  that  they  were  persons  of  intellectual  as 
well  as  social  quality,  when  they  rose  together  from  the 

8 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

place  where  they  were  sitting  and  left  the  car  at  I  forget 
just  what  halt.  I  followed  them  with  famishing  curiosity, 
but  when  the  train  started  again  I  was  obliged  to  try  doing 
what  I  could  with  their  vacant  places. 

Then  I  found  that  their  places  were  not  really  vacant, 
but  were  taken  by  the  companions  who  had  sat  together 
in  front  of  us  at  the  open-air  theater  the  night  before. 
I  was  glad  to  note  that  by  daylight  they  seemed  more 
substantial  than  they  had  looked  in  the  glare  of  the 
electric-lamps.  It  was  as  if  they  had  chosen  to  put  off 
whatever  had  been  apparitional  about  them,  and  to  be 
plain  middle-aged  Englishmen  of  comfortable  condition.  I 
observed  that  the  stouter  of  the  two  now  wore  a  Norfolk 
jacket,  with  knickerbockers  and  low  tan  shoes,  as  if  he 
chose  to  do  something  more  rustic  in  his  dress  than  the 
other,  who  was  dressed  as  if  he  had  just  come  down  from 
the  waning  season  in  London,  and  had  not  yet  got  into  his 
outing  things.  I  fancied  that  in  this  effect  he  was  choosing 
not  to  be  mixed  up  in  anybody's  mind  with  the  Bank- 
Holiday  makers,  who  were  already  swarming  over  the 
country,  and  were  giving  every  outward  token  of  having 
a  whole  three  days  off;  for  it  was  Saturday  afternoon, 
and  Monday  would  be  the  great  day  of  all.  There  was 
something  less  than  kind  in  his  melancholy,  and  yet  I 
could  not  have  said  that  he  looked  so  much  unkind  as 
reserved  in  the  bearing  by  which  each  of  us  declares  his 
habitual  feeling  toward  others.  It  was  as  if  he  were  not 
precisely  offended  by  the  existence  of  common  men,  but 
incommoded;  they  kept  him  not  perhaps  from  thinking 
of  himself,  but  from  thinking  of  things  infinitely  more 
important  to  him  than  they  were.  I  was  most  struck 
with  this  sort  of  aloofness  from  his  species,  this  philosophic 
abstraction,  when  at  our  coming  to  Broadway  his  com 
panion  spoke  of  the  different  artists  who  had  first  colon 
ized  the  place.  I  had  never  been  there,  but  it  was  dear 

9 


THE   SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

to  me  because  my  chief  association  with  it  was  the  memory 
of  a  many-gifted  friend  who  might  have  been  almost  any 
sort  of  artist,  but  chose  mainly  to  be  a  painter  till  the  sea 
engulfed  him  with  the  others  that  went  down  in  the 
Titanic.  I  wondered  if  I  should  perhaps  see  the  house 
where  that  dear,  sunny-eyed  F.  M.  lived,  not  mattering 
that  I  should  not  know  it  if  I  did  see  it;  and  I  fancied  a 
curious  sympathy  with  my  mood  in  the  gayer  of  the 
companions  which  was  absent  from  the  gloomier  one. 
It  was  not  so  much  that  he  did  not  care,  as  that  he  could 
not;  his  thoughts  were  fixed  on  those  abstractions  in 
which  he  was  himself  the  center  and  the  sole  concrete.  I 
thought  that  if  I  had  told  the  first  about  my  friendship 
with  the  bright  spirit  so  tragically  quenched  he  would  have 
understood,  and  would  have  said,  perhaps,  the  fittingest 
thing  that  could  be  said.  But  as  it  was  I  could  only  catch 
a  phrase  or  two  of  the  talk  which  I  tried  to  eavesdrop,  and 
heard  such  words  as  "one  of  among  the  many  lovely 
Rosalinds,"  and  "beautiful  young  American  actress, " 
who  had  come  to  England,  but  soon  married  off  the  stage, 
and  now  lived  the  genius  of  that  place.  It  did  not  seem 
to  interest  the  other,  who  remained  fallen  in  a  sort  of 
bitter  muse,  till  we  reached  the  station  where  we  changed 
from  our  pleasant,  roomy  motor  to  the  crowded  express. 
The  porter  ran  far  forward  along  the  train  before  he  could 
find  places  for  us,  and  he  had  so  much  difficulty  that  we 
began  to  hope  he  would  be  obliged  to  put  us  into  a  first- 
class  compartment  with  our  third-class  tickets,  when  he 
got  seats  of  the  right  grade  of  our  transportation,  and  we 
rode  the  rest  of  the  way  to  Stratford  in  a  car  so  near  the 
locomotive  that  it  was  blind  with  the  smoke  and  choking 
with  the  coal-gas. 

It  was  a  very  long  ride;  but  suddenly,  before  we  ex 
pected,  we  had  arrived,  and  those  two  companions  stepped 

out  of  the  car  just  before  us.     I  heard  the  stout  gentleman 

10 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

say,  cheerily,  but  with  a  touch  of  friendly  irony  in  his 
words,  "Welcome  to  Stratford,  my  lord  of  St.  Albans!" 
If  I  had  then  any  lingering  doubt  who  the  pair  were  I  must 
have  known  beyond  any  misgiving  that  they  were  William 
Shakespeare  and  Francis  Bacon,  but  why  they  should 
have  come  there  together  on  terms  of  such  incredible 
reconciliation  I  shall,  perhaps,  never  be  able  to  make 
clear  to  the  impartial  reader;  as  for  their  respective 
partizans  I  despair  of  them  absolutely.  I  wished  to  seize 
the  friendlier  phantasm  of  the  two,  and  force  him  to  some 
explanation,  and  I  suppose  I  must  have  made  a  clutch  at 
the  incorporal  air  where  I  had  last  seen  him;  but  a  vigilant 
young  porter  mistook  my  gesture  as  an  appeal  for  his  help. 
He  seized  our  hand  baggage,  and  with  the  demand, 
"Any  luggage  in  the  van,  sir?"  hurried  us  away  through 
the  Bank-Holiday  makers,  already  arrived  in  swarms  that 
Saturday  afternoon,  and  staring  about  in  the  distraction 
which  lasted  with  them  for  the  next  sixty  hours  at  least. 
They  thronged  the  roadways  as  well  as  the  footways  of 
the  old  town  (which  I  shall  try  to  keep  throughout  this 
narrative  from  calling  quaint),  and  they  would  have  had 
my  cheap  commiseration  in  their  air  of  vague  bewilder 
ment  and  apprehension  of  something  worse  than  they 
were  already  suffering  if  I  had  not  been  anxious  in  my 
doubt  whether  we  should  find  The  Spotted  Pard  all  that 
we  had  hoped  a  small  hotel  might  be  when  we  wired  for 
rooms  from  Cheltenham.  The  holiday  makers  stood 
about  in  helpless  groups,  or  streamed,  men  and  maids, 
and  mothers  and  fathers  with  footsore  children  at  their 
heels  and  toes,  and  mutely  made  way  for  the  motor  we 
had  found  at  the  station  offering  itself  for  the  same  fare 
as  a  fly,  and  now  carrying  us  and  our  piled-up  trunks  to 
The  Spotted  Pard  for  the  one-and-six  which  at  home 
would  have  translated  themselves  into  two-and-sixty  of 

our  little-buying  dollars  and  cents. 

11 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

It  was  such  a  quiet,  kind-looking,  patient  crowd,  so 
Englishly  single-minded  and  good-tempered,  that  I  was 
glad  to  have  our  chauffeur  consider  it  humanely  in  his 
course;  and  I  did  not  feel  it  so  very  molestful  as  I  might 
in  my  vision  of  the  streets  and  houses,  which,  from  once 
seeing  them  years  before,  I  now  found  so  familiar.  They 
did  somewhat  clutter  these  charming  perspectives  which 
so  many  streets  in  Stratford  open  from  the  sort  of  central 
quadrangle  before  the  Town  Hall;  and  an  early  stroll 
before  dinner  showed  them  filling  the  river  with  their 
skiffs,  and  punts  and  canoes,  and  droning  and  whining 
out  the  tunes  of  their  blatant  gramophones.  But  people 
whose  holidays  are  few  do  not  know  how  to  fit  themselves 
becomingly  into  the  general  scene,  or  to  take  their  joy 
without  the  vulgarity  which  it  comes  so  easy  for  us  betters 
of  theirs  to  avoid.  The  great  thing  is  for  them  to  have 
their  holiday,  and  it  is  no  little  thing  for  us  finer  folk  to 
recognize  the  vast  difference  between  ourselves  and  them. 
The  town  received  them  with  the  hospitality  which  was 
none  the  less  sincere  because  it  was  commercial;  but 
even  for  money  it  could  not  house  them  all,  and  it  remains 
a  wonder  to  me  how  the  most  of  them  got  roofs  over 
their  heads  for  the  night.  Well  toward  midnight  a  police 
man  was  seen  going  about  with  a  party  of  Americans, 
richly  able  and  eager  to  pay  for  lodgings,  and  knocking  at 
every  promising  and  unpromising  door  to  demand  shelter 
for  them.  I  am  sorry  to  leave  that  party  of  compatriots 
still  walking  the  streets;  they  were  probably  only  a  little 
less  undeserving  than  ourselves,  who  had  thought  to  wire 
for  rooms  at  The  Spotted  Pard. 

But  even  then  I  did  not  think  ourselves  treated  in  the 
measure  of  our  merit  as  the  night  wore  away  after  we  had 
gone  to  sleep  in  them.  They  were  pretty  rooms,  very 
fresh  of  paper  and  paint,  in  an  ell  or  extension;  but  with 

the  falling  damp  outside  a  strong  musty  smell  as  of  old 

12 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

hay  began  to  rise  from  the  floor  within.  It  was  so  strong 
that  it  roused  the  sleepers  from  their  first  sleep  and  kept 
them  from  their  second  till  well  toward  morning.  Then 
I  was  haunted  in  my  dream  by  the  noise  of  a  ghostly 
thumping,  such  as  horses  and  even  cows  make  in  the 
vigils  which  they  seem  able  to  keep,  and  not  suffer  the 
anguish  of  insomnia.  Without  waking  or  at  all  ceasing 
from  my  indignation  at  having  been  given  rooms  in  what 
might  once  have  been  a  hay-loft,  I  was  aware  that  the 
noise  I  heard  was  no  stamping  of  horses  or  cattle,  but  the 
muffled  blows  which  Shakespeare  was  dealing  on  the  doors 
of  inns  and  lodgings  with  a  demand  for  shelter,  so  that  his 
valued  and  honored  friend  Francis  Bacon,  Lord  Verulam 
and  Viscount  of  St.  Albans,  should  not  be  obliged  to  spend 
the  night  in  the  street. 


THE   SEEN    AND   UNSEEN 


CHAPTER  III 

"You  see,"  Shakespeare  explained,  a  few  days  later, 
"I  had  asked  him  down  for  the  week-end,  and  I  fancied 
he  would  be  my  guest  at  New  Place." 

"New  Place?"  I  ventured  to  interrupt. 

"Yes,  of  course;  the  little  property  I  bought  from  my 
friend  Underbill  when  I  came  to  Stratford  in  1597,  a  few 
years  before  I  returned  from  London  for  good.  It's  at 
the  corner  of  Chapel  Street  and  Chapel  Lane.  You  must 
have  seen  it — " 

"Oh  yes,  yes!"  I  assented,  from  the  strong  purpose  I 
had  of  seeing  it. 

"The  house  was  in  pretty  bad  shape  when  it  came  into 
my  hands,  not  much  better  than  a  ruin,  with  two  tumble 
down  old  barns,  and  a  weedy,  wild-grown,  old  garden. 
But  I  had  an  architect  look  the  house  over  and  see  what 
could  be  done  with  it,  and  he  made  something  very  pretty 
and  comfortable  out  of  it;  those  fellows  have  a  lot  of 
taste;  and  there's  where  I  finally  settled  when  I  gave 
London  up  in  1609,  and  there's  where  I  died  seven  years 
later." 

It  was  rather  creepy  hearing  him  speak  of  his  death  in 
that  casual  way,  but  if  he  did  not  mind  it  I  did  not  see 
why  I  should,  and  so  I  smiled,  and  nodded,  and  said,  "I 
remember,"  and  he  went  on. 

"I  had  the  garden  dug  out  of  the  weeds,  and  the 
ground  leveled,  and  sown  to  grass,  and  I  planted  a  mul 
berry-tree — I  was  always  planting  mulberry-trees — " 

14 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

"There  I  am  with  you!"  I  broke  in.  "I've  planted 
no  end  of  them.  It's  the  most  delicious  fruit  in  the 
world!" 

"Isn't  it?"  he  joyously  returned,  though  I  could  feel 
that  he  did  not  quite  like  having  his  autobiography  in 
terrupted. 

"When  I  died  I  left  it  to  my  daughter  Susanna,  who 
married  Doctor  Hall —  Or  would  you  say  Doc?" 

"No,  no;  some  Americans  do,  in  the  friendly  do 
mesticity  of  Western  country  towns;  but  in  New  York 
we  don't  say  Doc — often." 

"Hall  was  a  good  fellow,  a  gentleman  born,  and  he  had 
a  large  practice  and  was  well-to-do;  so  that  I  expected  the 
place  would  remain  in  the  family,  but  it  didn't  fall  out 
so.  Susanna's  daughter  Elizabeth  married  a  man  of  the 
name  of  Nash,  and  Susanna  settled  the  place  on  them.  It 
turned  out  that  this  couldn't  stand  in  law,  but  they  ar 
ranged  that  Elizabeth  should  keep  the  property  when 
she  became  Lady  Barnard  in  her  second  marriage.  After 
her  death  it  was  sold  to  Sir  John  Walker,  and  he  gave  it 
to  his  daughter  who  married  Sir  Hugh  Clopton,  if  you 
follow  me.  Oddly  enough,  it  was  Sir  John  Clopton  who 
built  the  house  I  pulled  down,  and  now  he  pulled  my 
house  down,  and  put  up  something  very  fine  in  its  place." 

"That's  very  interesting,"  I  said,  putting  my  hand  over 
my  mouth. 

"Yes,"  Shakespeare  said,  absently;  and  then  he  sighed, 
and  said,  "Poor  Anne!" 

"Anne?"  I  echoed. 

"Yes.  My  widow — my  wife.  She  died  in  New  Place 
a  good  many  years  after  me.  I  have  never  felt  quite 
happy  about  the  way  people  talk  of  Anne.  I  suppose  it 
began  with  my  leaving  her  my  second-best  bed  in  my  will, 
but  that  was  because  she  always  slept  in  it  at  New  Place, 

and  wanted  it  especially  devised  to  her.     I  made  no  pro- 

15 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

vision  for  her  because  she  was  in  the  affectionate  keeping 
of  her  children,  and  it  would  have  reflected  upon  them  if 
I  had  done  so.  Young  man!"  he  broke  off  from  his  pen 
sive  strain  of  reminiscence. 

"Not  unless  you  call  seventy-six  young"  I  suggested. 

"I  do,"  he  answered.  "I'm  three  hundred  and  fifty, 
counting  both  worlds,  and  I  feel  as  young  as  ever  I  did. 
But  what  I  was  going  to  say  was  that  I  don't  want  you 
to  carry  away  the  notion  that  Anne  was  unworthy  of  me, 
or  socially  unequal.  She  was  seven  years  older  than  I, 
when  we  were  married;  I  was  as  ripe  as  she  in  experience, 
and  I  was  a  very  forward  boy;  I  don't  brag  of  those  days 
of  mine.  The  world  somehow  likes  to  think  meanly  of 
the  wives  of  what  it  calls  geniuses;  but  if  the  wives  had 
their  say,  they  could  say  something  on  their  own  side  that 
would  stop  that  talk.  Xantippe  herself  might  give  a  few 
cold  facts  about  Socrates  that  would  make  the  world  sit 
up;  and  if  Anne  told  all  she  knew  about  me,  my  biog 
raphers  would  have  plenty  of  the  material  that  they 
think  they're  so  lacking  in  now.  She  was  a  good  girl, 
and  her  people  were  well-to-do.  For  the  time  and  place 
their  house  was  handsome,  as  you  will  see  when  you  go 
to  Shottery.  Been  to  Shottery  yet?" 

"Not  this  time;  but  I'm  going,"  I  said. 

"Do  so.  And  when  you're  there  think  kindly  and 
reverently  of  my  poor  Anne.  I  only  wish  I  had  been  as 
good  husband  to  her  as  she  was  wife  to  me." 

His  voice  broke  a  little,  and  in  the  pause  he  let  follow, 
I  ventured:  "I'm  glad  to  hear  you  say  all  this.  If  I 
must  be  quite  honest,  the  worst  grudge  I  ever  had  against 
you  was  because  of  that  second-best  bed." 

"Well,  I'm  glad  to  explain  it,  and  I  should  be  obliged 
if  you  would  make  the  case  known  to  your  American 
friends.  It  was  a  rush  bed  like  those  you  will  see  at  Shot 
tery,  and  such  as  my  poor,  dear  Anne  slept  in  when  she 

16 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

was  a  girl.  She  clung  to  it  all  her  life;  the  children  used 
to  laugh  at  her  about  it.  We  had  a  good  deal  of  joking 
in  our  family,  at  New  Place.  Anne  liked  the  children 
laughing  at  her — especially  Susanna." 

I  ought  to  ask  the  reader's  patience  with  what  hap 
pened  just  here.  The  moving-picture  show  is  not  yet 
established  in  the  general  respect  which  it  must  enjoy, 
and  I  hesitate  to  say  that  there  now  ensued  as  from  a 
succession  of  rapidly  operated  films,  like  those  thrown  up 
at  the  movies,  the  apparitions  of  a  young  girl  and  a 
young  man,  she  mature-looking  at  first,  but  growing 
younger  and  he  older,  till  they  fairly  matched  in  con 
temporaneity.  In  the  last  they  stood  together,  she  with 
her  hand  through  his  arm,  and  he  looking  fondly  down 
into  her  lifted  face.  Under  this  picture  ran  the  legend: 

So  wear  they  level  with  each  other's  hearts 

which  seemed  the  adaptation  of  a  familiar  verse  claiming 
a  like  effect  in  marriage  from  a  disparity  of  ages. 

Without  saying  anything  my  companion  looked  at 
these  apparitions;  when  the  last  flashed  out  he  glanced 
at  me. 

"Then  it  isn't  true — I  am  glad  it  isn't  true — as  some 
people  have  fancied,  that  you  didn't  live  happily  with 
her?"  I  said. 

"Man!"  he  cried,  sternly,  "Anne  was  with  me  seven 
years  at  New  Place,  after  I  came  home  to  her  at  Stratford. 
She  was  with  me  when  I  died;  and  do  you  think — can 
you  think — " 

"No,  no,  I  don't  think  it,  and  I'm  ashamed  of  hinting 
at  what  I've  heard  others  hint  at  thinking."  He  seemed 
unable  to  go  forward  from  this  painful  point,  and  at  last 
I  made  bold  to  prompt  him:  "But  who  was  that  Rev. 
Francis  Gastrell  who  cut  down  your  mulberry-tree  when 

he  bought  New  Place?" 

17 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

"That  churlish  priest?  Oh,  I  don't  know.  He  seemed 
to  have  a  spite  against  the  whole  place.  He  hated  people 
coming  so  much  to  see  the  tree,  and  he  pulled  the  house 
pretty  well  to  pieces  for  no  better  reason.  To  be  sure, 
the  Cloptons  had  largely  made  it  over  by  that  time. 
You'll  see  some  of  the  old  foundations — I  don't  say  the 
original.  They've  made  a  pleasant  garden  of  it  now,  and 
planted  it  with  trees  and  flowers.  They've  got  a  sort  of 
typical  mulberry  on  a  rise  of  ground  in  the  lawn;  I 
believe  it  was  a  slip — you  can't  kill  a  mulberry — brought 
from  my  old  home-place — they  call  it  the  Birthplace — 
which,  of  course,  you've  seen.  You  must  go  and  sit  in 
the  New  Place  garden;  it's  very  nice." 

He  lapsed  into  a  dreamy  silence,  and  seemed  to  have 
forgotten  so  entirely  what  we  had  begun  talking  about, 
that  after  waiting  rather  a  long  time  without  saying  any 
thing,  I  hemmed,  and  asked,  "And  Bacon?" 

"And  Bacon?"  he  echoed.  "Oh,  yes!  About  our  ad 
venture  that  first  night?  I'll  own  it  had  slipped  my  mind. 
But  you  know  I  brought  him  quite  confidently  here," 
and  as  Shakespeare  said  this,  I  perceived  we  were  sitting 
in  the  New  Place  garden  on  a  bench  just  opposite  the 
typical  "mulberry -tree;  I  noted  that  the  berries  were 
pale  red,  and  I  remembered  leaving  my  own  mulberries 
black-ripe  at  home  a  month  before.  "And  really,  till  I 
came  quite  to  the  corner  here,  I  didn't  see  that  the  place 
was  as  bare  as  the  Rev.  Gastrell  had  made  it;  while  we 
came  along  I  had  been  looking  at  the  moon  over  the 
tower  of  the  lovely  old  Guild  Chapel,  there,  which  it 
silvered  along  the  edges.  You  might  have  knocked  me 
down  with  a  feather;  I'd  been  counting  so  on  an  eager 
welcome  from  Susanna  and  my  poor,  dear  old  Anne; 
and  suddenly  it  went  through  me  how  dead  and  gone  we 
all  were,  as  well  as  our  pleasant  home.  I  made  his  lord 
ship  what  excuse  I  could,  and  said  I  must  ask  him  to  put 

18 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

up  with  humbler  quarters  in  my  Birthplace  (as  they  call 
it)  off  in  Henley  Street.  I  could  see  he  didn't  like  it;  but 
he  was  very  tired,  and  he  said  he  should  be  content  with 
any  sort  of  shakedown;  he  added  something  inculpatory 
about  his  supposing  I  had  not  thought  of  Bank  Holiday 
when  I  asked  him  here.  I  can  scarcely  expect  you  to 
believe  me  when  I  tell  you  what  happened  at  the  Birth 
place;  if  it  hadn't  happened  to  me  I  don't  think  I  should 
believe  it  myself.  We  found  the  premises  in  the  keeping 
of  a  fellow  who  had  been  got  in  to  assist  the  regular 
custodians,  worn  out  by  the  rush  of  Bank  Holiday;  and 
he  pretended  not  to  know  me  at  first,  but  I  soon  made 
him  understand  that  wouldn't  do;  even  then  he  demurred 
at  my  having  brought  a  stranger;  he  said  that  none  of 
the  chambers  had  beds  in  them,  now,  and  he  could  hardly 
make  so  bold  as  to  offer  us  the  settle  where  he  had  been 
napping  on  some  rugs.  But  I  said  this  would  do  very 
well  for  my  friend,  and  I  would  make  shift  with  any  sort 
of  large  chair.  I  said  my  friend  was  Lord  St.  Albans,  and 
he  must  get  a  night's  rest,  and  the  man  said,  'Not  Sir 
Francis  Bacon?'  and  I  said  yes,  and  then  he  answered 
that  he  could  not  think  of  letting  Bacon  remain  under 
my  roof  for  a  single  hour,  much  less  a  whole  night.  He 
hinted  that  the  fact  of  my  bringing  him  with  me  there 
threw  a  doubt  on  my  own  identity;  didn't  I  know  that 
the  authorship  of  my  own  plays  had  been  impudently 
claimed  for  this  man;  and  how  could  I  be  going  about 
with  him  on  these  friendly  terms,  and  trying  to  extort 
a  reluctant  hospitality  for  him  from  my  native  place? 
I  told  him  that  I  would  be  answerable  to  Stratford  for 
anything  in  the  case  that  affected  her  honor  or  pleasure; 
that  neither  Bacon  nor  I  cared  the  least  for  that  silly 
superstition,  and  were,  as  we  always  had  been,  perfectly 
good  friends.  While  we  were  wrangling  Bacon  drowsed 
in  the  chair  he  had  sunk  into  and  slept  heavily;  it  was  the 

19 


THE   SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

only  sleep  he  got  that  night,  poor  ghost!  Actually  the 
man  turned  us  out  at  last,  threatening  to  call  the  watch 
if  we  didn't  go !  Of  course  we  went,  poor  old  Bacon  stum 
bling  along,  heavy  with  sleep,  on  his  sore  feet;  and  I  suppose 
we  must  have  knocked  at  every  other  door  in  Stratford." 

"Yes,  I  heard  you,"  I  said,  and  I  wanted  to  tell  him 
how  I  thought  at  first  it  was  the  stamping  of^hoofs  under 
my  room,  but  of  course  he  could  not  interrupt  himself 
for  that. 

"  It  was  the  same  story  every  where :  full-up!  At  some 
places  they  were  kind  and  truly  sorry;  at  others  they  were 
furious  at  being  called  to  the  door,  and  banged  it  in  our 
faces.  But  we  came  at  last  to  a  house  where  they  said 
they  had  a  room  with  two  beds  in  it;  and  I  pushed  in 
at  once,  before  Bacon  could  object  to  a  double-bedded 
room;  I  wasn't  sure  that  he  would  have  objected,  but 
he's  rather  crotchety,  you  know.  The  man  of  the  house 
was  such  a  kindly  soul,  and  took  his  having  been  knocked 
up  at  one  o'clock  in  the  morning  so  sweetly  that  I  thought 
I  would  please  him  by  letting  him  know  what  a  distin 
guished  guest  he  had,  and  I  whispered  that  my  friend — 
he  was  drowsing  again — was  the  Viscount  of  St.  Albans. 
He  started  back,  and  his  face  darkened;  it  turned  fairly 
black  with  a  frown.  'Do  you  mean  Bacon — the  Bacon?7 
'Well,  yes/  I  said,  'Sir  Francis  you  know;  our  late 
Lord  Chancellor.'  'Then,'  says  he,  'I'll  thank  you  both 
to  walk  straight  out  of  my  house.  I  would  rather  burn 
it  down  than  let  it  shelter  that  cruel  wretch  for  a  single 
night — a  single  hour — a  single  minute!  Go!'  'But  my 
dear  man/  I  said,  'you  surely  won't.  I'm  your  fellow- 
townsman,  and  I  entreat  you  not  to  bring  shame  upon 
the  place  by  this  barbarity.  I've  lived  here,  man  and 
boy,  body  and  soul,  for  three  hundred  years,  and  I  never 
knew  the  like.  When  I  tell  you  who  I  am  I  think  you'll 

be  willing  to  let  us  stay.    Why,  I'm — ' 

20 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

"'I  don't  care  who  you  are,'  he  roared.  'Out  you  go, 
and  go  you  should  if  you  were  Shakespeare  himself/" 

He  laughed  in  an  apparently  lasting  enjoyment  of  the 
joke,  and  then,  noticing  that  I  did  not  seem  to  share  his 
amusement,  he  checked  himself  for  such  explanation  as  I 
might  have  to  offer. 

"Why,  but — why,  but,"  I  began,  "I  don't  quite  under 
stand  how,  being  disembodied  spirits  as  you  were,  you 
required  lodgings  at  all.  I  should  have  thought  that  the 
' viewless  wind'  would  have  been  shelter  enough — " 

I  stopped,  and  he  said  with  a  smile  of  interest  in  the 
psychical  fact:  "There  is  something  rather  curious  in  all 
that.  We  don't — we're  not  allowed  to — return  to  your 
world  without  certain  conditions.  If  we  materialize,  as 
you  call  it — the  term  is  inexact — we  must  put  on  some  of 
the  penalties  as  well  as  privileges  of  mortality,  of  matter. 
We  get  hungry;  we  feel  heat  and  cold;  we  want  roofs  and 
walls  about  us.  You  see?" 

"Yes,  I  see,"  I  said,  but  in  fact  I  did  not  see,  or  at  least 
see  why.  "  Then  I  should  think  that  after  being  liberated 
from  those  conditions  you  wouldn't  care  to  resume  them 
—often." 

"We  don't.    And  that  accounts  for  it." 

"Accounts?" 

"For  our  coming  back  so  seldom.  The  incalculable 
majority  of  us  never  even  wish  to  come  back.  There 
isn't  really  much  meaning  in  our  return.  Some  of  you 
here  think  it  would  be  a  good  thing  if  we  appeared  as  a 
testimony  to  our  continued  existence,  but  we  don't  like 
being  doubted  and  denounced  as  impostors  when  we  do 
that,  as  occasionally  happens;  and  it's  generally  felt  that 
you  who  are  here  now  can  wait,  as  we  waited  before 
you." 

"Yes,  there  is  sense  in  that,"  I  said.     "And  what,  if  I 

may  ask,  has  induced  you  to  materialize  at  this  time?" 

21 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

"Well,  I  rather  like  being  here  in  August,  for  what  they 
call  my  festivals.  I  always  had  a  tenderness  for  the  place, 
you  know." 

"I  don't  wonder/' 

"And  I  like  to  realize  that  I'm  remembered  here.  But 
they're  painful,  too — some  of  the  experiences  of  coming 
back.  We  don't  return  without  resuming  the  griefs, 
the  sorrows  of  our  mortal  state.  As  long  as  we  remain  in 
eternity  we  are  quit  of  our  bereavements;  if  we  come 
back  to  time  our  losses  are  as  keen  as  in  our  mortal  lives. 
I  cannot  revisit  New  Place  without  losing  my  dear  boy, 
my  Hamnet  again,  who  died  when  he  was  eleven;  I  had 
so  counted  on  his  coming  to  live  with  me  there,  and  I 
had  my  eyes  on  it  all  the  more  fondly  because  I  thought 
to  have  him  my  heir  to  it." 

His  voice  shook,  and  I  said,  lamely  enough,  "But  it's 
all  right  now?" 

"Oh  yes,  it's  all  right.  As  he  never  married,  he  con 
tinues  with  his  mother  and  me;  his  sisters  continue  with 
their  husbands." 

"Why,  I  should  think  you  would  all  continue  together." 

"No,  husbands  and  wives  continue  together.  Marriage 
is  the  only  human  relation  that  endures  forever.  It  de 
stroys  the  old  home  to  create  a  new  one,  and  this  in  turn 
is  destroyed  that  a  still  newer  one  may  be  created." 

"It  seems  a  little  hard,"  I  mused. 

"No,  no!  It's  all  right.  It's  reason;  it's  logic;  it's 
love.  How  could  it  be  otherwise,  if  you  will  think?  We 
blood-kindred  can  all  be  together  instantly,  by  merely 
willing  it;  but  Anne  and  I  are  together,  and  we  have 
our  Hamnet  with  us  always — our  little  one,  our  dear  boy!" 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 


CHAPTER  IV 

AT  the  time  Shakespeare  repeated  the  speech  of  the 
householder  who  turned  him,  because  of  Bacon,  from  his 
door,  I  did  not  realize  its  full  import.  I  had  to  live  almost 
a  whole  August  in  Stratford  before  I  could  feel  the  force 
of  it,  or  know  just  how  much  it  meant,  not  to  Shakespeare 
himself,  for  he  always  was  and  always  will  be  a  very 
modest  man,  but  how  much  it  meant  to  the  man  who 
uttered  it.  He  had,  in  a  manner,  to  take  his  life  in  his 
hand,  and  to  launch  himself  in  the  tremendous  risk  of 
something  like  perdition,  for  it  was  little  short  of  blas 
phemy  to  say  such  a  thing  in  Stratford.  The  place  may 
not  have  sufficiently  prized  her  inestimable  citizen  in  his 
earthly  lifetime,  but  she  has  abundantly  made  up  for 
any  oversight  of  the  kind  since  those  days.  She  cherishes 
his  memory  with  a  sort  of  intensive  recollection,  which 
leaves  no  moment  of  his  absence  or  his  presence  unremem- 
bered.  I  say  absence  and  presence,  but  if  forever  absent 
he  is  forever  present  in  these  fond  records;  and  one  can 
not  witness  them,  though  a  wayfaring  man,  and  err  in 
a  sense  of  their  wonderful  comprehensiveness. 

It  is  not  the  names  of  streets  or  houses  that  speak  of 
him;  I  do  not  know  that  there  is  any  street  named  after 
him,  and  the  sole  objective  monuments,  architecturally 
and  sculpturally,  are  so  poor  and  few  that  one  might 
wish  there  were  none.  A  sprightlier  fancy  than  Strat 
ford's  might  have  called  every  house  after  some  person 

of  his  plays;    and  this  had  been  done  in  the  pleasant 
3  23 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

hotel  which  received  us  when  all  the  good  will  of  The 
Spotted  Pard  could  not  avail  against  that  ancient  and 
barn-like  smell  which  filled  our  pretty  rooms  and  choked 
us  from  our  dreams.  The  rooms  in  the  pleasant  hotel  I 
mean  are  each  named  for  some  hero  or  heroine,  mistress 
or  lover,  whom  the  poet  left  to  outlive  him  here  through 
the  whole  bounds  of  human  fancy;  so  that  if  the  lady  in 
Desdemona  had  decided  to  stay  on  another  day,  the  gentle 
man  in  Sir  Toby  Belch  might  have  been  going  unexpect 
edly;  or  the  party  who  had  engaged  Troilus  and  Cressida 
might  have  decided  to  take  Romeo  and  Juliet  instead. 
If  Prospero  had  been  assigned  to  some  one  vaguely  wiring 
from  London,  the  wirer  could  be  put  in  Macbeth  or 
Othello  without  knowing  the  difference,  when  he  came, 
and  the  maiden  ladies  whom  the  manageress  had  meant 
to  give  the  Weird  Sisters,  could  just  as  well  have  Hermia 
and  Helena,  if  the  married  pair  personally  applying  did  not 
like  Katherine  and  Petruchio.  Outside  of  the  pleasant 
hotel,  however,  the  memory  of  Shakespeare  is  wholly  sub 
jective,  but  it  is  none  the  less  pervasive  and  exclusive  for 
that.  More  and  more  one  stands  amazed  at  its  absolute 
possession  of  the  place.  In  that  England  of  kings  and 
nobles,  of  priests  and  prelates,  of  heroes  and  martyrs, 
there  is  no  care  for  them  in  Stratford,  though  I  suppose 
that  they  must  all  have  more  or  less  masqueraded  there 
in  their  time. 

That  loyalty  of  the  English,  which  we  Americans  can 
never  understand,  had  indeed  dug  up  for  dramatic  use  in 
the  Bank  Holiday  Pageant  following  our  arrival,  the  fact 
of  Queen  Henrietta  Maria's  entry  into  Stratford  before 
the  coming  of  the  hapless  Charles;  and  not  far  away  at 
Edgehill  a  great  victory  of  the  Commonwealth  was  won; 
but  all  such  memories  sink  and  fade  before  that  which 
began  to  fill  the  world  from  this  little  town,  till  now  the 

world  itself  can  hardly  hold  it,  and  I  do  not  doubt  it  will 

24 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

be  found  common  fame  in  Mars  when  Mars  is  proven  in 
habited  beyond  peradventure,  and  in  Venus  if  ever  she 
is  seen  giving  her  cold  cheek  to  the  kisses  of  the  sun.  In 
Stratford,  I  do  not  suppose  there  is  any  man,  woman,  or 
least  articulate  child  who  does  not  know  something  of 
Shakespeare,  and  I  have  no  question  that  under  their 
feet  the  passers  from  the  remotest  corners  of  the  earth 
could  hear  the  very  stones  prate  of  his  whereabouts 
if  they  stopped  to  listen.  That  was  not  quite  my  experi 
ence,  but  I  was  not  surprised,  when  I  issued  from  the 
New  Place  garden  with  the  poet,  to  hear  a  gray  cat  mew 
intelligent  recognition  on  the  sidewalk  before  the  gate. 
By  this  time  it  was  entirely  natural  that  the  night  should 
be  past,  and  the  sun  should  be  warming  the  English  world 
which  it  seldom  overheats,  instead  of  the  moon,  which 
had  seemed  to  be  silvering  the  edges  of  the  old  Chapel 
tower  while  we  talked. 

Shakespeare  stooped  over  and  scratched  the  grateful 
forehead  of  the  cat  which  pressed  plaintively  mewing 
against  his  ankle  and  lifted  one  paw  to  him  as  if  for  pity. 
"Why  it's  lame,  poor  little  chap,"  he  said.  "I  hope  it's 
some  honorable  wound  received  in  battle,  and  not  a  pinch 
from  a  passing  motor-car.  At  first,"  he  added,  while  he 
still  kept  acceptably  scratching  its  head,  "I  thought  it 
was  one  of  our  New  Place  cats;  Susanna  was  very  fond 
of  cats;  but  then  I  saw  it  couldn't  possibly  be  living  now 
even  with  its  nine  mortal  lives  put  end  to  end;  they 
would  be  mortal  lives  of  course." 

He  laughed  softly  with  a  kindly  pity  in  his  laugh,  which 
won  my  heart  more  than  anything  he  had  yet  said. 
I  began  to  understand,  and  I  understood  more  and  more 
why  his  contemporaries  called  him  gentle  and  sweet. 
He  stooped  again,  and  again  scratched  the  head  of  the 
cat,  which  now  rubbed  harder  against  his  ankle,  and  to 

my  unspeakable  astonishment  and  its  own,  passed  through 

25 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

the  limb,  and  came  out  on  the  inner  side  of  it.  The  crea 
ture  looked  up,  and  then  parading  round  him  with  arched 
back  and  lifted  tail,  tried  the  other  leg  and  came  through 
it  as  with  the  first.  At  this  result  it  looked  up  as  before, 
and  catching  a  mocking  glance  from  the  poet's  eyes,  it 
mewed  loudly  and  limped  off  as  swiftly  as  its  three  legs 
could  carry  it.  He  followed  it  with  his  laughter,  but  now 
boyishly  wild  and  joyous,  as  at  some  successful  trick. 
"Poor  old  Tom!"  he  called  after  it.  "You  didn't  realize 
that  I  was  shadow,  did  you?  Well,  when  I  come  again 
you  may  be  shadow,  too,  and  then  you  can  rub  against 
my  legs  without  rubbing  through  them!" 

He  laughed  and  laughed,  with  that  soft,  kindly  laugh 
of  his,  which  made  me  understand  so  many  things  in 
his  philosophy  that  I  had  not  understood,  and  which 
was  so  simple-hearted  and  sincere  as  well  as  wise,  that 
it  made  me  ashamed  not  to  own  that  I  had  shared 
the  cat's  bewilderment.  I  said,  "Oh  yes,  matter 
would  pass  through  spirit,  just  as  spirit  would  pass 
through  matter."  And  then  I  pretended  a  recurrent- 
interest  in  his  overnight  adventure  with  Bacon,  and  I 
said:  "Apropos  of  life,  mortal  and  immortal,  I  didn't 
exactly  understand  just  where  Lord  St.  Albans  did  pass 
the  night,  after  all." 

He  smiled.  "No,  I  didn't  tell  you.  But  I  will,  some 
time.  I  think  it  will  interest  you.  That's  one  of  our 
privileges  in  the  future  life — as  you  call  it — and  it's  a 
great  privilege." 

"And — and  couldn't  you  tell  me  now?  I  should  so  great 
ly  like  to  know.  Where  is  he  this  morning,  for  instance?" 

"Well,  I  don't  know  that  I  could  just  say." 

"But — but,"  I  persisted,  for  I  felt  that  somehow  he 
was  slipping  from  me,  and  I  could  not  bear  to  lose  him 
yet,  "you  didn't  mean  to  imply  that  this  last  man 

turned  you  out  because  of  that  Baconian  hypothesis?" 

26 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

I  scarcely  remember  how  I  was  going  to  get  him  to 
answer  me;  but  before  I  could  bring  my  purpose  to  bear, 
I  was  alone  with  the  crippled  cat  which  was  mewing  its 
pathetic  entreaties  to  me,  and  the  Bank  Holiday  sun  was 
climbing  the  sky  to  shine  unbrokenly  on  the  Pageant 
slated  for  that  Monday.  Then  I  was  sensible  of  there 
having  been  a  Sunday  between  this  Monday  and  the 
Saturday  of  our  arrival,  and  of  our  having  driven  out 
through  its  afternoon  heat  and  dust  to  see  an  aviator 
go  up  in  his  biplane  from  a  clover-field,  and  buzz  first  loud 
and  then  low  while  he  mounted  into  the  "pits  of  air,"  as 
Emerson  called  them  in  a  subtle  forecast  of  the  atmos 
pheric  pockets  which  the  airmen  have  found  in  the 
welkin.  We  crossed  the  fine  old  bridge  over  the  Avon, 
which  we  left  to  the  aimless  joyance  of  the  holiday 
makers,  marshaled  by  the  trumps  of  gramophones  bray 
ing  from  their  punts  above  the  prone  shapes  of  young 
men  stretched  out,  as  the  wont  in  England  is,  in  the  hol 
lows  of  the  boats,  while  girls  paddled  or  poled  the  dull 
craft  along.  Beyond  the  river  stretched  the  dusty  road, 
with  pairs  wedded  and  unwedded,  and  families  of  fathers 
and  mothers  and  children  on  foot  or  in  perambulators, 
thickly  trooping  toward  the  clover-field,  and  patient  of 
the  carriages  and  motors  that  pushed  through  them  as 
patient  as  themselves.  They  seemed  not  to  know  how 
hot  it  was,  and  they  took  their  pleasure  without  expense 
when  they  reached  the  clover-field,  where  it  was  as  easy 
to  see  the  flying  outside  the  hedges  as  inside  them. 
None  of  them  seemed  to  feel  the  Sabbatarian  scruple  which 
had  forbidden  the  Race  Track  authorities  to  let  the  airmen 
fly  on  Sunday  from  the  course  where  so  much  money 
must  be  gambled  away  on  week-days.  Every  nation  has 
its  peculiar  virtues,  and  the  English,  who  are  not  without 
their  vices,  expect  to  have  their  Sabbath-keeping  imputed 

to  them  for  righteousness  when  they  are  playing  the 

27 


THE   SEEN   AND   UNSEEN 

horses.  I  who  know  nothing  of  horse-racing  but  as  a 
spectacle,  am  not  sure  that  man-flying  is  more  beautiful, 
and  it  is  now  scarcely  more  novel.  The  machine  harshly 
and  then  softly  buzzed  about  the  sky,  and  descended  and 
ascended,  and  all  who  strained  their  necks  to  see  it 
were  equally  content  whether  they  had  paid  or  not 
paid. 

What  left  me  with  no  sort  of  question  was  the  Pageant 
next  day,  for  whatever  the  Pageant  is  it  is  joy,  void  of  all 
alloy  of  misgiving.  Event  for  event,  I  think  I  liked  best 
the  pleasure  of  the  actors,  who  were  to  help  the  sight  so 
much,  assembling  for  their  floats  behind  the  Theater,  in 
those  masquerade  properties  they  had  so  easily  come  by. 
The  ladies  were  preoccupied  in  woman's  great  business 
of  looking  beautiful,  as  if  they  took  seriously  the  burlesque 
of  the  Elizabethan  courtier  who  capered  about  painting 
their  cheeks  for  them.  A  friendly  old  gentleman  in  the 
crowd,  who  made  our  acquaintance  and  kept  it  at  every 
point  throughout  the  morning,  here  tried  to  remember 
what  part  he  had  once  taken  in  a  Pageant  long  ago,  and 
was  not  satisfied  with  his  son's  suggestion  that  it  was 
Falstaff.  When  the  procession  was  formed  the  floats 
toiled  slowly  and  shakily  through  the  well-contented 
town;  floats  of  fairies  great  and  little,  historic  floats  and 
dramatic,  and  of  the  chiefest  rustic  and  mechanic  and  do 
mestic  arts,  all  led  by  Queen  Henrietta  Maria  making 
her  prolonged  and  repeated  entry  into  Stratford.  A  vast 
Swan  built  up  of  white  cotton  batting  satisfied  the  heart 
jealous  for  the  primacy  of  the  Swan  of  Avon  in  a  supreme 
hour  of  his  native  town,  and  if  it  came  last  in  the  show, 
it  certainly  did  not  come  least.  The  fairies  danced  and 
sang  their  way  through  the  streets,  and  the  large  chil 
dren  seemed  as  single-heartedly  glad  as  the  little,  and 
when  they  happened  to  be  young  girls,  as  lovely.  But  I 

gave  my  heart  most  to  the  old  chair-mender,  who  in  his 

28 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

linen  smock  frock  and  his  aged  top-hat  repaired  a  chair- 
bottom  throughout  the  morning  with  unflagging  zeal. 

The  long  forenoon  ended  with  a  longer  afternoon  in  the 
meadows  beyond  Avon,  where  all  the  local  sports  had  their 
turn  on  foot  and  on  horseback,  with  old  and  young  in  the 
acts.  A  hundred  little  girls  skipping  with  their  skipping- 
ropes  like  one,  and  acrobatic  boys  in  divers  circus  feats, 
represented  the  schools;  fencing,  single-stick,  wrestling, 
running,  and  leaping  by  amateurs  varied  the  generously 
contributed  events  of  the  cavalrymen,  who,  from  some 
neighboring  station,  slashed  each  other's  paper  plumes  as 
rival  knights,  and  wrestled  from  their  horses'  backs. 
When  the  spectacle  became  unbearable  without  tea,  there 
was  of  course  a  tea-tent  where  you  might  have  it  at  the 
counter  or  at  tables  on  the  grass;  if  you  ordered  it  at  a 
table  it  was  our  experience  that  the  tea-maiden  who  took 
the  order  had  it,  after  a  hesitation,  on  her  conscience  to 
warn  you  beforehand  that  it  would  be  a  shilling  each, 
and  not  sixpence,  as  at  the  counter.  I  thought  at  home 
we  might  have  been  left  to  the  greater  outlay  without  the 
forewarning;  but  perhaps  not. 


THE   SEEN   AND   UNSEEN 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  Pageant  which  began  the  August  festival  at  Strat 
ford  was  only  the  beginning.  It  ended  at  noon;  the  other 
things  went  on  the  whole  month;  and  I  am  not  sure  that 
the  pageant  had  quite  got  its  paint  off  before  the  song, 
the  dance,  the  masque,  the  play,  and  the  lecture  were  in 
full  tide  of  joyance.  They  went  on  concurrently,  like 
those  streams  which  meet  from  different  sources  and 
swim  together  in  one  channel  to  the  sea;  and  as  you  were 
borne  with  them  you  became  yourself  of  their  effect  if 
not  their  origin.  You  became  a  part  of  the  general  trans 
port,  and  felt,  though  you  might  not  altogether  look  it, 
the  happiness  of  the  town  in  her  greatest  son,  the  greatest 
of  the  sons  of  men.  As  the  days  passed  in  a  golden  sequence 
scarcely  dimmed  by  a  few  cloudy  hours,  it  seemed  as  if 
there  could  never  be  such  another  August  if  ever  there 
had  been  its  like  before,  and  the  Genius  of  the  festival, 
whoever  he  was,  must  have  rejoiced  more  and  more  that 
he  had  appointed  it  for  the  season  which  Shakespeare 
might  have  chosen  himself  for  his  natal  month  rather 
than  the  raw  April  that  chillily  welcomed  him  into  the 
world.  Of  course  the  right  Shakespeare  festivals  are  and 
have  been  held  on  and  about  his  accepted  birthday,  but  if 
the  gradual  rise  of  the  August  celebrations  has  been  from 
a  sense  of  his  own  imaginable  preference,  I  should  feel  it 
a  very  graceful  compliance.  I  should  not  think  their 
coincidence  with  the  greatest  Bank  Holiday  of  the  year 

would  be  offensive  to  his  memory;    he  would  not  prob- 

30 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

ably  have  objected  to  sharing  them  with  the  middle,  and 
lower  middle,  and  unqualifiedly  lower,  classes  who  then 
flood  the  whole  English  land  and  who  seem  to  wash 
through  his  native  town  in  tides  that  rise  yearly  higher. 
If  he  seems  in  his  plays  to  show  little  specific  sympathy 
with  the  groundlings,  that  is  no  doubt  because  he  was 
himself  a  groundling,  or  very  near  it,  and  knew,  as  they 
know,  that  as  groundlings  they  were  no  better  than  their 
betters.  But  this  is  a  point  which  he  was  to  touch  upon 
later,  when  I  brought  it  home  to  him  in  one  of  those  tacit 
colloquies  we  were  often  holding  in  Stratford. 

As  for  his  actual,  or  putative  birthday,  I  have  ventured 
a  conjecture  of  the  English  April's  chilliness  in  the  six 
teenth  century  because  I  have  found  April  so  cold  in  the 
twentieth,  but,  for  all  I  can  really  say,  that  famous 
twenty-third  of  it  may  have  been  one  of  those  rich,  soft 
days,  full  of  dull  sunshine  when  the  flowers  make  haste 
to  open  themselves  to  the  bees,  and  the  birds  do  their 
best  to  flatter  the  trees  that  they  have  made  no  mistake 
in  budding  or  even  blossoming.  In  fact,  if,  as  many  con 
tend,  we  know  very  little  about  Shakespeare,  we  know 
least  of  all  what  sort  of  weather  it  was  the  day  he  was 
born.  This  is  one  of  the  strongest  proofs  of  the  Baconian 
authorship  of  his  plays;  for  if  Bacon  had  been  born  on 
that  23d  of  April,  we  should  have  known  just  how  the 
thermometer  stood,  and  whether  the  day  was  wet,  or  the 
spring  early  or  late;  he  would  have  noted  the  facts  him 
self.  But  I  do  not  mean  to  fling  this  apple  of  discord 
among  my  readers;  it  was  never  gathered  in  Stratford, 
for  no  such  fruit  grows  there.  They  have  scarcely  heard 
of  Bacon  in  that  devoted  town,  though  indeed  I  found 
at  one  of  the  shops  a  small  bronze  door-knocker  figuring 
the  Lord  Chancellor  in  the  court  where  he  took  bribes  if 
he  did  not  actually  sell  justice;  the  point  has  been  made 
in  his  favor.  On  the  other  hand,  in  a  shop-window  not 

31 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

far  off,  the  proprietor  had  sacrificed  his  very  patronymic 
to  the  poet's  fame  in  the  sign  of  "Bacon's  Shakespeare 
Restaurant."  I  was  thinking,  "How  Shakespeare  would 
enjoy  seeing  this!"  when  in  one  of  those  cinematographic 
apparitions  which  he  was  apt  to  make  in  my  consciousness, 
flashing  in  and  out  of  it  as  the  figures  do  in  the  films 
changing  at  the  moving-picture  show,  he  joined  me  and 
consented  to  share  my  amusement  in  it.  But  I  observed 
that  more  and  more  he  refused  to  smile  at  the  cost  of  a 
man  who  had  not  himself  been  very  tender  of  his  friends 
while  he  lived  among  them  here. 

As  we  turned  from  the  window  and  he  led  on  down 
the  street,  he  said,  kindly,  "  We  must  always  remember 
that  he  is  one  of  the  greatest  benefactors  of  the  race,  and 
that  he  suffered  greatly." 

"And,  his  atonement,  as  far  as  his  plea  of  guilty  went, 
was  magnificent.  It  was  one  of  those  supreme  things." 

"Magnificent,  supreme!     Yes,  but  what  a  tragedy!" 

"You  could  have  written  it;   Tie  couldn't." 

"Well,  perhaps  that  one  he  could." 

The  incident  by  no  means  followed  close  upon  our 
meeting  in  New  Place  gardens,  but  he  had  offered  no 
facts  yet  as  to  where  or  how  he  had  disposed  of  a  guest 
who  made  even  the  poet  unwelcome  in  his  mother-town. 
I  ventured  to  fancy,  however,  that  he  might  have  taken 
for  their  common  shelter  one  of  those  pleasant  houses 
which  their  owners  are  willing  to  let  furnished  in  Strat 
ford,  together  with  their  servants  and  the  general  good 
will  of  the  place,  while  they  are  themselves  off  on  their 
holidays,  at  the  seaside,  or  in  Brittany  or  Switzerland. 
In  our  own  vain  search  for  quarters,  we  viewed  several 
such  houses,  as  alternatives  of  the  lodgings  which  were  al 
ways  full-up;  and  I  have  finally  decided  that  Shakespeare 
took  a  certain  pretty  cottage  which  was  proposed  to  us 
with  a  garden  sloping  to  the  Avon  and  a  punt  belonging 

32 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

to  it  lying  at  the  foot  of  the  lawn.  I  am  rather  sorry  now 
that  we  did  not  take  it  ourselves,  not  only  because  it  had 
a  populous  wasps'  nest  in  the  center  of  a  flower  bed,  and 
a  temporary  gardener  with  a  carbuncle  on  his  neck  and 
three  more  coming,  but  because  I  should  like  having  lived 
in  a  cottage  haunted  by  the  greatest  poet  and  the  greatest 
philosopher  of  all  time.  We  should  not  have  known  they 
were  there  by  day,  and  by  night  we  should  have  been  so 
tired  with  each  day's  pleasuring,  and  so  drowsy  from  being 
up  every  night  at  the  theater  for  the  Shakespeare  plays, 
that  we  should  not  have  objected  to  the  ghostly  presences 
that  exchanged  criticisms  of  each  other's  lives  and  works 
in  our  dreams. 

It  would  not  be  easy  to  give  a  true  notion  of  the  full 
ness  of  each  day's  pleasuring  without  seeming  to  give  a 
false  one,  and  I  shall  not  try  to  do  more  than  touch  here 
and  there  on  a  fact  of  it.  I  should  not  be  able  to  say 
indeed  just  how  or  why  we  found  our  favored  way,  one 
of  the  first  mornings,  to  the  Parish  Parlor  where  we  some 
how  knew  that  there  was  to  be  folk-singing  and  folk- 
dancing,  and  a  lecture  about  both.  Two  years  earlier 
we  had  formed  the  taste  for  these  joys  at  a  whole  day  of 
them  in  the  Memorial  Theater,  and  had  vowed  ourselves 
never  to  miss  a  chance  at  them.  The  songs  then  were 
sung  and  the  dances  danced  by  young  people  and  chil 
dren  from  the  neighboring  factories  and  farms,  but  now 
the  intending  teachers  of  those  gay  sciences  were  being 
taught  by  one  deeply  learned  in  them  and  of  an  impas 
sioned  devotion  to  them.  One  of  the  ballads  was  so  mod 
ern  as  to  be  in  celebration  of  the  Shannon's  victory  over 
the  Chesapeake  in  the  War  of  1812,  when  the  American 
ship  went  out  from  Boston  to  fight  the  British,  and  some 
how  got  beaten.  It  had  a  derisive  refrain  of  "Yankee 
Doodle  Dandy  O,"  and  whether  or  not  the  lecturer  di 
vined  our  presence,  and  imagined  our  pain  from  this  gibe, 

33 


THE   SEEN   AND   UNSEEN 

it  is  certain  that  the  next  time  he  gave  the  ballad  to  be 
sung,  he  adventurously  excused  it  on  the  ground  that  it 
possibly  celebrated  the  only  British  victory  of  the  war. 
Nothing  could  have  been  handsomer  than  that,  and  it 
was  in  the  true  Shakespearean  spirit  of  Stratford  where 
fourteen  thousand  Americans  come  every  year  to  claim 
our  half  of  Shakespeare's  glory. 

Three  days  of  the  week  the  lecturer  taught  the  teach 
ers  by  precept  and  example;  he  talked  a  little,  very 
simply  and  unaffectedly,  from  full  knowledge  of  his  theme, 
and  then  he  called  upon  the  students  to  sing  and  dance. 
He  was  not  above  giving  them  the  pitch  from  his  pipe, 
and  then  playing  the  tune  on  the  piano  with  the  accom 
paniment  of  a  girl  violinist;  and  we  could  not  choose 
whether  we  liked  the  singing  or  the  dancing  better.  They 
sang  old  country  ballads  and  they  danced  old  country 
ballets,  telling  stories,  and  reverting  to  the  primitive 
earth-worship  in  the  lilting  and  the  stamping  and  the  bell- 
clashing  of  the  morris  dances.  The  pictures  which  the 
learners  made  in  illustration  of  the  lecturer's  theme  were 
our  unfailing  joy,  but  the  first  morning  we  had  our  soul's 
content  absolute  beyond  any  other  fortune  when  the  whole 
glad  school  issued  from  the  place,  and  formed  in  the  mid 
dle  of  the  street,  where,  men  and  maids  together,  they 
took  the  light  of  the  open  day  with  the  witchery  of  their 
art,  as  they  wove  its  patterns  with  their  intercircling 
shapes  and  their  flying  feet  and  their  kerchiefs  tossing  in 
the  air  above  their  heads.  This  wild  joyance  was  called 
a  Processional,  and  it  was  likewise  called  Tideswell,  after 
the  village  where  it  was  first  imagined.  One  morning  the 
lecturer  joined  in  it,  and  became  a  part  of  its  warp 
and  woof. 

It  was  a  vision  of  Merry  England  which  the  heart  could 
give  itself  to  more  trustingly  than  to  any  dream  of  the 

olden  time  when,  with  whatever  will,  England  had  far 

34 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

less  reason  to  be  merry  than  now.  At  last  the  sense  of 
human  brotherhood  seems  to  have  penetrated  with  con 
science  the  legislature  long  so  cold  to  the  double  duty 
law  owes  the  common  life.  The  English  lawgiver  has 
perceived  that  to  keep  people  fairly  good  it  must  make 
them  decently  happy.  Better  wages,  evener  taxes,  whole- 
somer  housing,  fitter  clothing,  are  very  well,  but  before 
these  comes  the  right  to  a  fairer  part  of  the  general  cheer. 
It  was  told  us  that  the  young  people  who  came  to  learn 
these  glad  tidings  at  Stratford  were  all  teachers  in  the 
national  schools,  and  that  they  were  paid  by  the  govern 
ment  for  their  pleasure  in  learning  them.  Perhaps  I 
have  not  got  it  quite  right,  but  it  ought  to  be  as  I  have 
got  it,  and  at  any  rate  I  will  leave  it  so.  It  is  certain 
that  these  young  men  and  maids  were  working  as  con 
scientiously  at  their  gay  sciences  as  if  they  were  gloomy 
ones;  the  young  men  in  tennis  flannels  and  the  maids 
in  the  gymnasium  wear  which  left  them  free  to  foot 
it  illustratively  in  the  morris  and  the  country  dances. 
Most  of  the  young  ladies  were  housed  for  the  month  in 
a  girls*  school,  with  its  dormitories  and  its  lawns  and 
groves;  others  dwelt  in  tents  along  the  levels  of  the  Avon, 
where  through  its  willows  you  could  see  them  from  your 
punt  making  their  afternoon  tea,  or  kindling  their  fires 
for  the  evening  meal,  all  sweetly  sylvan,  and  taking  the 
heart  with  joy  in  their  workday  so  like  a  holiday.  They 
went  about  the  streets  of  the  town  in  the  waterproofs 
which  cloaked  the  informality  of  their  ballet  dress;  some 
times  the  dress  was  so  little  ballet  that  it  needed  no  cloak 
ing,  and  such  a  dress  we  once  saw  worn  late  in  the  after 
noon  when  the  wearer  had  to  fly  up  the  street  toward 
the  Parish  Parlor  so  as  not  to  be  late  for  the  song-and- 
dance  lecture.  The  dress  was  blue,  and  it  fluttered  about 
the  young  ankles  as  the  wearer  ran  along  the  wall  under 

some  overhanging  bushes  which  claimed  her  part  of  their 

35 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

bird-life  and  flower-life,  and  thrilled  the  heart  of  the  be 
holders  with  a  sense  of  beauty  escaped  from  some 

Attic  shape,  fair  attitude,  with  brede 

Of  marble  men  and  maidens  overwrought. 

Then  one  of  those  who  saw  the  lovely  vision  thought, 
"What  a  pity  Shakespeare  could  not  see  that!"  and  in 
stantly  to  his  inner  hearing  came  the  response,  "I never 
miss  seeing  such  things  as  that,"  and  there  at  my  shoulder 
the  friendly  phantom  was,  or  was  not,  it  mattered  so  little 
whether  or  no. 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 


CHAPTER  VI 

AT  Stratford  I  felt  as  I  had  not  before  that  one  of  the 
most  charming  things  in  Shakespeare,  a  man  so  variously 
charming  that  his  contemporaries  each  might  love  him 
for  a  different  thing,  was  his  fondness  for  his  native  town. 
Every  one  knows  how  affectionately  he  came  back  to 
Stratford  from  his  brilliant  success  as  player  and  play 
wright  in  London,  and  apparently  could  ask  nothing  bet 
ter  than  to  end  his  earthly  days  where  he  began  them. 
During  our  wonderful  August  of  uninterrupted  golden 
weather  he  seemed  to  like  dropping  round  to  my  hotel 
in  the  afternoon,  when  I  had  got  my  nap,  and  taking  me 
a  walk  about  the  town,  where  he  appeared  to  be  as  much 
at  home  with  the  modern  aspects  as  with  the  older  phases. 
He  had  the  good  citizen's  pride  in  its  growth,  and  noted 
how  pleasantly  it  had  pushed  out  beyond  his  birthplace 
to  the  northward  uplands  in  streets  of  nice  little,  new- 
brick  villas,  each  with  its  grassy  dooryard  and  flowery 
garden.  He  liked  all  the  newer  streets,  even  those  where 
the,  close-set,  story-and-a-half  rows  of  small  brick  cot 
tages  were  like  the  monotonously  ordered  play-blocks  of 
children.  He  professed  a  pleasure  in  their  bright  red, 
which  he  said  expressed  simple  cheerfulness  and  cleanly 
comfort,  and  he  could  not  understand  at  first  how  they 
should  interest  me  so  little,  I  being  from  a  new  world  full 
of  new  dwellings.  But  when  I  explained  that  this  was 
the  very  reason,  he  laughed  and  said  it  was  quite  im 
aginable,  and  he  amiably  consented  to  rambles  through 

37 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

the  fields  beyond,  where  Nature  was  neither  new  nor 
old,  but  was  what  she  always  had  been  and  always  would 
be.  Or  from  the  northward  uplands  he  would  turn  back 
across  the  Avon  canal,  and  come  down  William  or  Tyler 
Street  to  the  gardens  beyond  the  Birthplace  and  veer 
off  through  the  irregular  square  at  the  head  of  Bridge 
Street,  into  Chapel.  We  never  failed  to  join  in  tender 
enjoyment  of  the  sentiment  of  the  Police  Station,  with 
its  lace-curtained  bow-windows,  and  its  beds  of  flowers 
beneath  them.  He  seemed  particularly  fond  also  of  that 
rather  blank  square  where  High  Street  began,  with  the 
slope  of  Bridge  Street  to  the  river  and  the  little  afternoon 
show  of  hucksters'  booths  at  the  top,  and  the  huge  omni 
bus  motors  for  Leamington  and  Warwick  standing  mid 
way  of  its  incline  before  the  Red  Horse  and  the  Golden 
Lion  inns.  He  made  me  confess  that  the  effect  of  the 
bridge  across  the  river  was  very  pleasant  if  not  too  pic 
turesque,  and  now  and  then  he  walked  me  down  to  the 
holiday  life  of  the  stream,  and  the  sheds  of  the  cattle- 
market  beyond. 

I  had  not  the  ordinary  traveler's  zeal  for  the  timbered 
houses  so  characteristic  of  Stratford,  and  so  rather  abun 
dant  in  High  Street  and  Chapel  Street;  but  one  day  I 
fancied  going  with  him  into  the  Harvard  House,  which  I 
confessed  was  very  charming  and  perhaps  the  best  example 
of  the  style.  Apparently  the  American  flag  flying  at  the 
peak  of  the  gable  without  the  rivalry  of  the  British  colors 
anywhere  in  the  town  amused  him,  for  he  smiled  in  look 
ing  up  at  it,  and  said  in  his  time  we  were  all  English,  or 
if  I  liked,  all  Americans.  I  said  he  would  probably  find 
some  Americans  to  prefer  that  formulation  among  the 
many  thousand  that  visited  his  Birthplace  every  year; 
but  as  for  me  I  should  be  content  with  saying  that  we 
were  all  Shakespeareans  then.  At  this  he  laughed  out 
right,  and  taking  me  by  the  shoulder  pushed  me  toward  the 

38 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

door.  He  put  his  hand  on  the  carved  panel  and  we 
passed  through  its  substance  without  attracting  the  notice 
of  the  kind  woman  who  shows  people  about  the  place. 
There  were  a  number  of  Americans  following  her  and 
listening  to  her  comment  on  the  house  which,  girl  and 
woman,  she  had  known  while  it  was  still  business  offices, 
brutally  modernized  with  plaster  and  paper  that  hid  the 
rich,  old  black  timbers  and  the  wattle-and-dab  of  the 
homely  walls.  She  was  saying  that  she  still  lived  in  it, 
and  kept  house  in  the  top  story,  while  Shakespeare,  who 
was  making  me  invisible  and  inaudible  with  himself, 
laughed  and  said:  " Before  we  took  that  cottage  of  ours 
on  the  river,  I  brought  our  friend  Bacon  here  with  me  in 
the  hope  that  this  good  soul,  or  perhaps  even  Mistress 
Harvard,  might  find  us  quarters  after  we  had  been  turned 
from  every  other  door  in  Stratford.  You  may  imagine 
what  a  piece  of  luck  I  thought  it  when  instead  we  were 
received  by  the  Rev.  John  Harvard  himself,  who  had 
come  down  to  Stratford  for  the  Bank  Holiday,  and  had 
kept  staying  on  with  his  mother  for  pure  pleasure  in  the 
town.  John  is  a  good  fellow,  and  I  counted  so  confi 
dently  on  his  welcome  that  I  made  my  friend  known  to 
him  at  once.  '  You'll  be  glad  to  meet  Lord  St.  Albans/ 
I  said,  '  because  a  law  professor  of  yours  over  there  in 
Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  was  one  of  the  most  strenuous 
and  zealous  upholders  of  the  theory  that  he  wrote  my 
plays.  It's  something  that  neither  his  lordship  nor  I 
believe  in  ourselves,  but  we  respect  the  earnest  convictions 
of  others,  and  he  has  always  rather  liked  having  the  theory 
dignified  by  a  law  professor's  acceptance;  he  has  a  fellow- 
feeling  for  a  jurist,  you  know.'  I  saw  Harvard  was  a  little 
bemazed  by  my  palaver,  and  evidently  groping  for  my 
friend's  identity.  'St.  Albans  —  St.  Albans,'  he  said, 
and  I  said,  '  Yes;  Sir  Francis  Bacon,  you  know/  and  then 

he  said,  'Oh!    Oh  yes!'  and  shook  hands,  but  not  very 
4  39 


THE   SEEN   AND   UNSEEN 

cordially,  I  thought,  and  he  asked,  *  What  can  I  do  for  you, 
gentlemen?'  which  I  always  feel  equivalent  to  'How  little 
can  I  do?'  I  told  him  he  could  save  our  souls  alive  by 
giving  us  the  shelter  of  his  roof  for  the  night,  and  I  re 
lated  our  misadventures.  He  laughed  rather  meagerly, 
and  said  he  should  be  only  too  glad,  but  '  It's  my  mother's 
house,  you  know;  I'm  only  here  as  a  sort  of  guest  myself. 
I'd  ask  her;  but  she's  rather  a  stiff  old  Puritan,  and  I 
don't  know  just  what  she  would  say  to  having  a  stage- 
player  under  her  roof.'  '  Oh,  that's  all  right !'  I  reassured 
him.  'I  don't  mind  walking  the  night,  myself,  but  his 
lordship  is  rather  worn  out,  and  I  don't  think  he'll  much 
mind  my  leaving  him.'  In  fact,  I  saw  by  his  anxious  face 
that  he  wouldn't  mind  it  at  all;  he  was  always  ready  to 
throw  a  friend  over;  Essex,  you  know.  I  added,  to  humor 
the  joke,  that  though  he  might  have  written  my  plays,  it 
was  certainly  I  who  played  them,  and  Mistress  Harvard's 
objection  ought  to  rest  on  me  alone.  The  Reverend 
John's  eye  glimmered  cold;  he  hemmed  and  hawed,  but 
said  nothing  about  Bacon's  staying  the  night  under  his 
mother's  roof  without  me,  and  Bacon  pulled  himself  up 
out  of  the  chair  he  had  dropped  into,  and  we  went  out 
again  under  the  stars,  more  hospitable  than  John  Har 
vard's  eyes." 

I  was  rather  blankly  silent.  Then  I  managed  to  ask: 
"And  is  this  your  notion  of  something  amusing?  Or 
merry,  as  you  would  call  it?" 

"Why,  if  it  doesn't  appear  so  to  you!  But  at  the  time 
I  thought  that  after  my  being  turned  out  of  one  house  on 
Bacon's  account  he  was  having  his  revenge  in  being  turned 
out  of  another  on  my  account." 

"Oh,  I  see.  That  was  rather  merry,"  I  said,  but  I 
hastened  to  leave  the  point.  "By  the  way,  this  strikes 
me  as  being  one  of  the  nicest  of  your  old  timbered  houses; 

it's  a  style  of  architecture  that  can't  very  well  be  com- 

40 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

mended  for  beauty;  but  I  suppose  it  has  charm,  and  it's 
endearingly  simple-hearted.  I  like  their  opening  a  bit 
of  the  wall  here  to  show  the  wattle-and-dab  construction, 
the  interwoven  wooden  slats  filled  in  with  mortar;  we're 
mostly  wattle-and-dab  ourselves,  morally,  if  not  physical 
ly;  and  the  old  house  has  its  stateliness.  Looking  from 
the  back  toward  the  street  this  main  room  is  of  noble  size 
and  proportions,  and  that  nicely  carpentered  frieze  is  deli 
cate  and  very  pretty.  Who  were  the  Harvards,  ara/way?" 

"Not  Harvards,  even,  when  this  house  was  built.  It 
was  built  by  your  John's  grandfather  and  grandmother, 
and  very  probably  his  mother,  who  was  their  daughter 
Katherine,  was  married  from  it  to  John's  father;  he  be 
longed  in  Southwark,  where  I  had  one  of  my  theaters, 
and  his  father  was  a  butcher.  My  own  father  was  a 
butcher,  you  know,  after  he  failed  in  the  wool  business, 
and  I  handled  the  meat  myself." 

"Yes,  yes,"  I  hastened  to  interrupt;  he  was  running 
to  autobiography  too  much.  "I  hope  you  didn't  obtrude 
the  horrid  carnage  on  the  public  as  your  English  butchers 
do  nowadays.  I  suppose,"  I  ventured,  "that  it  was  con 
sidered  rather  a  drop  from  the  butchering  business  when 
you  took  up  play-acting." 

"You  mean  by  my  townfolk  here?  Well,  they  didn't 
regard  my  London  life  with  pride  exactly,  as  you  may 
have  inferred  from  the  Harvards7  reluctance  about  me." 

"And  over  there,"  I  pursued,  helpless  against  the  curi 
osity  I  had,  "over  there — where  you  are  now,  I  mean — 
do  they  look  upon  it  quite  as  the  good  people  of  that  day 
did?" 

"The  dramatic  vocation?  Why,  we  are  rather  useful 
occasionally.  Eternity  gets  a  bit  long,  now  and  then, 
and  a  vivid  representation  of  some  sort  helps  make  it  go 
again.  And  in  the  case  of  a  reluctant  conscience,  a  slug 
gish  and  unwilling  memory  as  to  deeds  done  in  the  body, 

41 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

if  we  can  dramatize  the  facts  to  the  doer —  Yes,  we  are 
rather  useful,  and  nothing  is  respected  so  much  as  useful 
ness,  there." 

He  stopped,  and  I  took  the  word.  "I  see;  and  I  sup 
pose  you  were  away  in  London  at  the  time  this  house 
was  built  in  1596?" 

"I  was  back  and  forth  a  good  deal,  for  I  always  meant 
to  retire  to  Stratford  and  I  was  buying  real  estate  here — " 

"And  Tithes,  and  supposititious  Gentility,  so  as  to 
qualify  you  to  set  up  a  coat  of  arms?" 

"I  gave  way  to  that  folly,  yes.  It  is  a  part  of  the  Eng 
lish  illusion.  You  are  fortunate  in  having  had  your  eyes 
opened  in  America,  where  you  care  nothing  for  such 
things." 

"Well,  well,"  I  parleyed.     "I  don't  know." 

"Really?"  he  returned,  ironically.  He  was  silent,  and 
when  he  spoke  again  he  said,  pathetically:  "I  remember 
the  year  this  house  was  built  chiefly  because  1596  was  the 
year  my  poor  boy  Hamnet  died.  It  would  have  broken 
my  heart  if  his  mother  hadn't  given  me  hers  to  keep  it 
whole.  That  was  when  we  were  first  truly  married. 
I  thought  I  was  parting  with  him  forever,  but  Anne  knew 
better;  we've  often  talked  it  over  together,  she  and  I, 
and  the  girls.  It  was  then  that  I  fixed  the  time  when  I 
should  come  to  Stratford.  We  were  in  the  old  Henley 
Street  house  still,  but  I  had  my  eye  on  New  Place." 

As  he  spoke  I  found  myself  in  the  street  with  him,  and 
began  taking  account  of  the  many  timbered  houses  which 
I  had  already  noticed  in  the  different  streets.  We  had 
the  Tudor  House  directly  at  hand  (rather  overdone,  after 
the  quiet  Harvard  House),  and  as  I  glanced  along  Chapel 
Street  at  the  stretches  of  the  same  sort  of  buildings,  I 
said:  "Why,  if  you  took  them  all  out  of  Henley  Street, 
and  Wood  and  Ely  and  Sheep  and  Chapel  Streets,  and  put 

them  together  they  would  reach  nearly  half  a  mile,  but 

42 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

with  their  white  masonry  and  black  timbers,  don't  you 
think  they  would  look  a  little  too  striking?  Rather  too 
like  half  a  mile  of  zebras?" 

"Why,  you  might  say  zebras;  but  they  are  not  all  so 
too  striking  as  this  Tudor  House,  which  you're  mostly 
carrying  in  your  mind,  and  which  is  not  strictly  Tudor, 
though  it  is  decidedly  timbered.  And  do  you  think  that 
any  middle-class  or  lower  middle-class  dwelling  in  any 
country  was  then  so  good,  or  was  in  such  good  taste?  I 
believe  I've  read  in  one  of  your  own  books  that  we  Eng 
lish  never  had  known  so  much  comfort  before  or  since  as 
in  the  period  of  these  houses." 

"Yes,  yes;  certainly.  And  if  I  said  it  I  must  have 
been  right,  and  come  to  think  of  it,  I  was  right  as  to  the 
inside  of  these  houses.  It's  the  outside  that  rather 
troubles  me  when  I  imagine  an  indefinite  stretch  of  it; 
then  it  turns  into  that  half-mile  of  zebras.  You  don't 
mind  my  saying  it?" 

"Oh,  not  at  all.  I  believe  the  great  mosque  at  Cor 
dova  reminded  you  of  a  colored  circus  tent — " 

"Why,  you  do  keep  round  after  me!  I  didn't  suppose 
you  followed  us  moderns  so  closely.  I'm  sure  it's  very 
gratifying.  But  I  suppose  you  have  a  great  deal  of  time 
on  your  hands?" 

"We  have  a  great  deal  of  eternity;  excess  leisure  is 
one  of  our  little  penalties;  if  we've  wasted  our  time  on 
earth  we  have  a  sense  of  too  much  eternity.  Of  course  it 
isn't  rubbed  in,  or  not  indefinitely,  though  naturally  there 
are  extreme  cases  when  it  is  rather  rubbed  in,  or  seems  to 
be.  Then  a  spirit  is  glad  to  turn  to  almost  anything  for 
relief,  and  in  that  way  all  your  popular  literature,  all 
your  best-selling  fiction,  for  instance,  gets  read  among  us. 
I  can't  say  that  it's  read  by  our  best  public,  but  perhaps 
the  public's  as  good  as  the  fiction." 

I  gave  an  unwilling  laugh.  "I  hope  your  acquaintance 

43 


THE   SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

with  my  travels  was  not  punitive.  I  don't  understand 
that  you  wasted  a  great  deal  of  time  when  you  had  the 
time." 

"I  gave  myself  vacant  spaces.  But  your  Spanish 
travels  were  not  one  of  my  penalties." 

"Oh,  thank  you!" 

"I'm  not  saying,  though,  that  I  agreed  with  you  about 
the  mosque  at  Cordova.  I  don't  agree  with  you  altogether 
about  the  outside  of  Stratford.  In  my  time  when  it  was 
all  timbered  houses  it  was  a  very  dignified  old  town;  it's 
only  in  my  eternity  that  it  seems  to  have  gone  off,  now 
when  many  of  the  buildings  along  High  Street  and  Chapel 
here  are  said  to  be  timbered  fronts  stuccoed  or  bricked 
over.  But  as  it  is — " 

"As  it  is,  it's  charming!  Isn't  this  perspective  delight 
ful?"  We  looked  along  the  friendly  street,  which, 
whether  it  called  itself  High,  or  Chapel,  or  Church,  was 
always  the  same  kind  street,  to  where  we  saw  it  closed 
by  a  comely  brick  mansion,  ample,  many-windowed,  and 
offering  a  rest  to  the  eyes  from  the  timbered  quaintness 
which  I  dared  no  longer  blame. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "all  our  perspectives  are  fair."  And 
by  an  art  he  had,  a  sort  of  control  over  place,  he  gave  me 
the  cinematographic  range  of  several  other  avenues,  up 
and  down,  and  then  reverted  with  me  to  Chapel  Street, 
where  we  had  been  standing.  "But  I  think  this  is  best; 
and  don't  you  like  the  courageous  fancy  expressed  in  that 
fagade  yonder  which  seems  to  have  burst  into  blossom 
'from  roof-tree  to  foundation-stone'?" 

"Yes,  I  do  like  that;  and  I  like  your  cabmen  pointing 
the  house  out  with  their  whips  to  their  American  fares, 
and  telling  them  the  name  of  the  famous  woman  who  lives 
in  the  house  and  owns  it." 

"You  Americans  are  under  a  peculiar  debt  to  that  lady. 

You  know  it  was  she  who  heard  that  the  Harvard  House 

44 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

was  for  sale  and  told  a  rich  Chicagoan  of  it,  and  bought 
it  for  him,  and  so  for  the  American  nation  and  the  Ameri 
can  university  which  he  gave  it  to.  It  was  a  handsome 
thing  all  around,  but  not  handsomer  for  the  millionaire 
than  for  the  novelist;  except  for  her  he  might  not  have 
known  of  the  house,  and  so  might  have  missed  his  great 
chance.  It  was  she  who  imagined  finding  the  present 
sixteenth-century  house  inside  of  the  commonplace  nine 
teenth  interior  and  exterior  which  it  wore  when  she  found 
it  for  sale,  and  afterward  realized  it  as  we  see  it  now. 
By  the  way,  your  Americans — " 

"Oh,  why  alienate  us  by  a  geographical  term?  We 
were  all  one  blood  when  you  lived  here  in  Stratford,  and 
we  have  never  ceased  to  claim  our  part  in  you;  why  not 
claim  your  part  in  us?" 

"What  would  your  Baconians  say?" 

"Let  them  say  what  they  like.  You  are  always  ours, 
and  so  is  Stratford.  I  am  proud  of  our  nation,  but  our 
name  seems  to  part  us!" 

"Well,  suppose  we  say  Yankees,  then?" 

"No,  no!  That's  what  our  illiterate  Indians  called  us 
in  your  time,  and  your  literary  Indians  call  us  now." 

"Well,  well,  call  yourselves  what  you  like.  Here  cer 
tainly  we  are  fellow-subjects — " 

"Oh  no!"  I  made  haste.     "Fellow-citizens!" 

My  companion  laughed.  "You  are  difficult.  I  was 
going  to  say  merely  that  here  in  Stratford  we  owe  a  great 
deal  to  your  countrymen,  whatever  we  call  them,  es 
pecially  your  countrywomen.  You  know  that  two  of 
them  have  lately  bought  my  son-in-law's  old  house,  and 
put  it  through  the  same  process  of  restoration,  or  rather 
revelation,  as  the  Harvard  House?" 

"Oh  yes,  I  know  that."  And  by  one  of  these  mystical 
effects  which  my  companion  could  operate  in  virtue  of 

his  character  of  disembodied  spirit,  we  were  instantly  in 

45 


THE   SEEN   AND   UNSEEN 

the  charming  grounds  of  Hall's  Croft.  "This  is  delight 
ful/'  I  said.  "To  think  of  a  place  and  to  be  there  in  the 
same  emotion—it  transcends  all  our  earthly  dreams  of 
rapid  transit.  Swedenborg  mentions  it,  and  I  always 
thought  it  such  a  poetical  idea,  but  I  never  imagined  it 
practicable." 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 


CHAPTER  VII 

"CROFT;  croft,"  I  soliloquized,  looking  about  me  on 
the  acre  or  more  that  spread  from  its  inner  boundary  to 
a  continuous  thicket  and  wall  next  the  street,  with  tall 
trees  overhanging  them:  a  space  of  level  greensward  with 
brown  walks  through  it  and  a  blaze  of  geraniums  here  and 
there.  In  the  midst  stood  a  mulberry  of  Shakespearean 
lineage,  which  had  dropped  its  half-ripened  fruit  on  the 
grass  and  gravel,  as  seems  the  habit  of  the  English  mul 
berry,  and  under  this  we  stayed  for  the  moment  together. 
"Croft,  croft,"  I  murmured,  and  I  went  on  with  the  lines 
from  Tennyson's  Two  Voices: 

"Through  crofts  and  pastures  wet  with  dew 
A  living  flash  of  light  he  flew. 

Of  course,  I  always  knew  what  crofts  were,  but  you  have 
to  see  one — and  such  a  one  as  this — before  you  can  realize 
that  when  a  croft  isn't  a  small  Westmoreland  farm,  it  is 
far  more  delightfully  a  turfy  Midland  garden  hedged 
from  the  world  of  such  a  tranquil  town  as  Stratford,  and 
inviting  to  easy-chairs  and  afternoon  tea  and  friendly 
talk,  day  in  and  day  out,  through  interminable  summers." 
"Yes,"  my  companion  said,  "Stratford  is  rather  full  of 
crofts;  two  or  three  more  along  this  street,  and  such  a 
vast  one  as  The  Firs  where  the  folk-singers  and  folk- 
dancers  are  sojourning,  and  that  behind  the  house  of  the 
author  who  found  the  Harvard  House  for  you,  and  others 
opening  in  lesser  limit  from  many  a  simple  dwelling  with 

a  street-front  that  keeps  its  croft  a  secret  from  the  passer." 

47 


THE   SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

"How  English!"  I  said.  "If  we  had  a  croft  at  home 
we  would  pull  down  the  wall  and  pull  up  the  hedge,  and 
pretend  to  welcome  the  world  to  it,  and  then  stay  indoors 
and  glare  at  people  who  ventured  to  pass  over  it.  I  think 
of  all  our  fake  simplicities  and  informalities  the  worst  is 
i  throwing  down  our  domestic  bounds,  and  pretending  we 
have  no  barriers  because  we  have  no  fences.  Why,  if 
you  found  yourself,  invisible  and  impalpable  as  you  are, 
in  our  fenceless  suburbs  you  would  feel  as  strictly  kept  on 
the  outside  as  an  unbidden  guest  at  a  dinner.  Of  course 
the  notion  was,  when  the  fences  were  first  disused,  that 
everybody  would  enjoy  the  beauty  that  somebody  owned; 
but  I  doubt  if  it  ever  happened;  the  sight  of  it  merely 
mocked  the  outsider,  and  until  we  really  own  the  beauty 
of  nature  in  common,  we  had  better  not  pretend  that  we 
do.  For  my  part,  I  believe  in  crofts,  and  I'm  going  to 
have  one  as  soon  as  I  get  home." 

"They  take  time,"  my  companion  suggested.  "I 
don't  suppose  my  son-in-law  lived  to  see  this  croft  in 
anything  like  its  present  state.  He  was  at  it  as  long  as  I 
lived,  and  I  lived  nine  years  after  he  married  our  Susanna. 
We  thought  it  rather  a  fine  match;  he  was  a  physician, 
and  had  a  large  practice  throughout  Warwickshire,  with 
a  social  standing  far  above  that  of  the  daughter  of  an 
actor-manager  and  a  writer  of  plays.  He  was  an  author 
himself,  and  kept  a  record  of  his  Cures  in  Latin;  and 
among  his  grateful  patients  were  '  Persons  Noble,  Rich, 
and  Learned/  There  were  thousands  of  such  cases,  and 
you  remember  Dr.  Furvivall  in  his  life  of  me  says  that 
if  he  had  cured  me  in  1616  instead  of  letting  me  die  we 
should  have  had  an  interesting  account  of  his  success." 
Shakespeare  chuckled  his  enjoyment  of  the  humor.  "But 
I  wasn't  destined  to  the  celebrity  his  learned  pen  might 
have  given  me;  I  have  had  to  put  up  with  the  name  that 

I  ignorantly  blundered  into  making  with  my  plays.     John 

48 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

was  something  of  a  prig,  I'm  afraid;  and  whenever  Ben 
Jonson,  with  some  of  the  London  fellows,  came  down, 
they  had  it  hot  and  heavy  in  learned  disputes  that  my 
1  small  Latin  and  less  Greek '  left  me  out  of.  But  he  was 
a  good  husband  to  Susanna,  though  she  never  would  al 
low  that  he  was  more  of  a  man  than  her  father."  He 
laughed  again  for  pleasure  in  his  daughter's  loyalty,  and 
said  she  was  her  mother  all  over  in  that.  "Yes,  John 
was  a  good  fellow,  and  if  he  fancied  coming  off  here  and 
building  himself  a  house  where  he  could  have  scholarly 
quiet  about  him,  I'm  sure  no  one  could  object.  For  my 
part  I  was  used  to  the  rush  of  London,  and  I  liked  better 
being  in  the  thick  of  things  at  New  Place." 

Considering  how  a  half-dozen  people  reading  the  tablet 
in  the  iron  fence,  and  a  few  others  peering  through  it  at 
the  foundations  of  the  demolished  mansion,  with  the 
passing  of  a  cab  or  a  motor  or  two,  formed  the  actual  tur 
moil  about  New  Place  (except  when  people  were  coming 
from  the  theater),  I  was  tempted  to  ask  my  companion 
if  that  was  his  notion  of  the  thick  of  things,  but  I  also 
wanted  to  put  a  question  of  more  pressing  interest.  "And 
do  you  suppose  you  could  get  me  a  glimpse  of  this  in 
terior  here?" 

"You  mean  of  the  house?" 

"Well,  yes." 

"Would  you  be  going  to  write  about  it?" 

"Well,"  I  hesitated,  "things  that  I  see  are  liable  to 
get  written  about,  you  know.  It  was  the  case  with  your 
self,  wasn't  it?" 

"I  think  I'll  let  you  come  some  day  without  me,"  he 
said,  gently,  but  firmly.  "Sometimes  people  are  sensi 
tive—" 

"But  anything  related  to  you,  no  matter  how  remotely, 
is  of  such  interest  to  the  public." 

I  was  trying  for  some  more  convincing  demur,  when  I 

49 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

found  myself  in  the  street  outside  the  croft,  and  walking 
toward  the  dear  and  beautiful  old  church  where  my 
friend's  immortal  part  lies  under  that  entreating  and 
threatening  tablet.  The  thought  of  it  gave  me  rather 
a  shiver.  "Oh,  oh!"  I  began.  "Had  you  thought  of 
going  in?"  With  a  concourse  of  Cook  tourists  in  motor 
omnibuses  and  on  foot  preceding  us,  I  pretended  a  prefer 
ence  for  some  quieter  occasion,  but  Shakespeare  regarded 
them  sociably  enough,  though  he  said: 

"No,  only  into  the  churchyard."  And  we  walked 
under  the  avenue  of  sheltering  trees  to  the  church  door. 
The  place  is  so  kindly  and  as  it  were  so  homelike  that  one 
night  I  came  there  in  the  company  of  another  and 
we  got  half  up  the  avenue,  moon-dappled  through  the 
leaves  overhead,  before  we  realized  that  we  were  in  a 
churchyard,  pacing  over  outworn  tombstones,  and  so 
thickly  peopled  everywhere  with  the  dead  of  earliest  and 
latest  date  that  we  could  not  have  stepped  aside  without 
treading  on  a  grave.  We  turned  and  fled,  but  now  with 
my  deathless  companion,  I  turned  and  kept  to  the  river 
side,  where  we  sat  down  on  some  memorial  stone,  and 
looked  at  the  stream  with  its  punts  and  skiffs  and  canoes, 
and  the  meadows  beyond  with  cows  and  boys  in  them, 
and  those  evident  English  lovers  strolling  together  beside 
the  water.  Pretty  well  everywhere  in  Stratford,  if  you 
will  listen,  you  will  catch  the  low,  hoarse  jawing  and  j ow 
ing  of  the  rooks,  and  this  now  fell  to  us  from  the  tree- 
tops  which  were  stirred  by  the  breeze  drawing  cool  along 
the  river.  The  trees  were  well-girthed  elms,  all  leaning 
a  little  from  the  shore,  as  if  they  had  been  lured  by  the 
river  when  they  were  tender  saplings,  and  had  not  been 
able  to  draw  back.  From  the  farther  and  nearer  ex 
panses  came  the  soft  clucking  of  oars  in  the  rowlocks, 
with  the  sound  of  voices,  and  a  stray  note  of  laughter; 

from  some  remotest  distance  the  wiry  whine  of  a  gramo- 

50 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

phone  reached  us.  Suddenly,  without  warning,  the  bells 
in  the  church  tower  burst  from  their  silence,  and  expanded 
in  the  air  overhead  as  with  a  canopy  of  clangorous  and 
deafening  uproar.  "Oh,  I  can't  stand  this!"  I  cried, 
startled  to  my  feet  by  the  explosion. 

"Yes?"  my  companion  said.  "I  suppose  I'm  so  used 
to  it;  but  it  is  rather  dreadful." 

"In  New  York,"  I  said,  proudly,  "we  don't  allow  it; 
we  class  it  with  the  detonations  of  the  insane  and  unsafe 
Fourth,  which  are  now  forbidden."  I  did  not  say  that 
bell-ringing  was  almost  the  only  unnecessary  noise  which 
we  forbade  at  other  times. 

But  probably  Shakespeare  knew;  he  said:  "Yes,  I 
suppose  it  belongs,  with  the  noise  of  drums  and  trumpets, 
and  cymbals  and  pianofortes,  to  the  boyhood  of  the  race; 
and  sometime  the  church-bells  will  be  silenced  along  with 
the  guns  and  cannon-crackers  and  steam-calliopes  as  an 
expression  of  feeling.  Perhaps,"  he  added,  "they  can  be 
so  tempered  as  to  have  the  effect  of  bells  at  a  distance, 
the  squillo  lontano  that  melts  the  heart  of  the  mariner 
when  he  hears  it  in  the  dying  day." 

"  Beautiful !"  I  breathed.     "  Do  you  read  Dante  much?" 

"Well,  you  know  I  picked  up  some  Italian  from  my 
friends  in  London,  when,"  he  laughed  amiably,  "I  was 
supposed  to  be  idling  away  my  time  in  writing  plays  and 
playing  them.  Italian  was  very  much  the  fashion  at 
court." 

"Yes,  I  know;  and,  of  course,  you  were  always  picking 
up  the  beautiful  wherever  you  found  it.  You  must  feel 
it  a  great  comfort,"  I  suggested,  "having  a  cultivated 
contemporary  with  you,  now  you're  settled  in  your  river 
side  cottage." 

"You  mean  his  lordship?  Well,  I  don't  know.  He's 
not  always  in  spirits;  he  has  his  ups  and  downs;  especial 
ly  his  downs." 

51 


THE   SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

"  Really?   He  isn't  still  worrying  over  those  old  things? " 

"Not  all  of  them." 

"Because  I  can  assure  you  that  since  he's  come  up  as 
the  author  of  your  plays  a  great  people  have  quite  ceased 
to  think  of  him  as  a  false  friend  and  a  venal  judge." 

"Oh  yes;  I  understand  that;  but  it  isn't  always  a  con 
solation  to  him.  By  the  way,  why  don't  you  come  and 
talk  to  him?  You  haven't  looked  in  on  us  yet.  Come!" 

In  a  moment  we  found  ourselves  in  a  passing  punt,  in 
visibly  and  unpalpably  seated  at  the  stern  behind  the 
head  of  the  white-flanneled  youth  who  lay  stretched  in 
the  bottom  of  the  boat  dreamily  admiring  the  awkward 
grace  of  the  girl  who  was  paddling  her  way  among  the 
different  river  craft.  Besides  the  skiffs  and  canoes  and 
the  other  punts  there  were  steam  and  naphtha  launches 
plying  back  and  forth;  but  she  got  through  them  all, 
thanks  less  to  her  skill  than  the  build  of  the  punt,  which 
is  framed  on  the  lines  of  the  puddle-duck  so  far  as  up 
setting  is  concerned.  When  we  came  abreast  of  the 
cottage  we  lightly  quitted  our  unconscious  hosts  who  kept 
along  the  willowy  shore,  while  we  mounted  to  the  level 
of  the  rose-walled  lawn,  where  we  found  Bacon  walking 
excitedly  to  and  fro  with  a  large  volume  open  between  his 
hands.  He  wore  the  dignified  and  handsome  Elizabethan 
gentleman's  dress,  and  I  admired  that  he  seemed  to  be 
smoking  a  long-stemmed  pipe,  as  if  he  had  been  one  of 
of  the  first  Englishmen  to  form  the  tobacco  habit.  He 
blew  fitful  clouds  from  it  as  he  walked,  and  he  was  so  ab 
sorbed  in  his  book  that  he  did  not  look  up  at  our  approach. 
Yet  he  seemed  to  know  of  our  being  there,  for  he  said: 
"Of  all  the  follies  alleged  in  proof  of  my  authorship  of 
your  plays,  there  is  none  quite  so  maddening  as  the  notion 
that  you  couldn't  have  written  them  because  if  you  had 
there  would  be  more  facts  about  you.  The  contention 

is,  and  it's  accepted  even  by  most  of  your  friendly  biog- 

52 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

raphers,  that  there  is  little  or  nothing  known  of  your  life. 
I  maintain  that  there  is  far  more  known  of  your  life  than 
there  is  of  most  authors'  lives." 

"There's  more  known,  in  some  particulars,"  Shake 
speare  answered,  merrily,  as  his  day  would  have  phrased 
it,  "than  I  would  have  allowed  if  I  could  have  helped  it." 

"You  mean  about  the  poaching,  and  the  deer-stealing 
and  the  cudgeling  by  Sir  Thomas  Lucy's  people,  and  your 
lighting  out  to  London  to  escape  jail?"  I  suggested. 

"I  was  a  wild  enough  boy,"  Shakespeare  began. 

Bacon  took  the  word  from  him:  "But  I  can  tell  you, 
my  friend,"  he  said,  lifting  his  eyes  and  bending  them 
severely  on  me,  "that  those  things  are  the  inventions  of 
vulgar  romance.  Will,  here,  probably  played  his  wild 
pranks,  as  he  would  own,  but  the  man  who  ended  as  he 
did  never  went  far  in  that  way." 

"Well,"  I  ventured,  "I  didn't  invent  them  and  nobody 
could  like  better  to  believe  them  lies.  I  wish  his  biog 
raphers  wouldn't  mention  them  even  to  refute  them,  but 
perhaps  it's  because  of  the  paucity  of  biographical  ma 
terial—" 

"Paucity  of  biographical  material!"  The  ex-lord 
chancellor  violently  struck  the  open  page  of  the  book  in 
his  hand.  "Let  me  tell  you  that  there  is  comparatively 
a  superabundance  of  material,  as  Andrew  Lang  shows  in 
his  excellent  book  on  Shakespeare,  Bacon,  and  the  Great 
Unknown.  Far  more  is  known  of  his  life  than  of  the 
lives  of  most  other  famous  poets."  Shakespeare  smiled 
at  me  with  a  shrug  of  helpless  protest,  as  if  he  would  say, 
"He  will  do  it,"  and  Bacon  went  on:  "Take,  for  instance, 
the  case  of  Virgil,  which  I  have  just  happened  to  look  at 
in  the  encyclopedia  here." 

"The  India  paper  copy?"  I  asked,  seeing  how  lightly 
he  held  it. 

"No;  it's  an  old  edition;  but  I've  imponderabled  it  for 

53 


THE   SEET*    AND    UNSEEN 

my  convenience  just  as  Shakespeare  makes  you  invisible 
when  it  suits  him  to  have  you  pass  with  him  unseen." 
He  handed  the  massive  volume  to  me;  it  almost  floated 
on  my  hand;  and  he  continued,  in  taking  it  back,  "Here 
is  the  most  famous  poet  of  antiquity,  after  Homer — " 

"Then  you  don't  believe  that  Homer  was  a  syndicate?" 
I  put  in. 

"No  more  than  I  believe  that  I  wrote  Shakespeare. 
And  what  does  our  encyclopedist  know  of  Virgil,  who 
lived  when  Rome  was  at  the  zenith  of  her  glory,  and  was 
one  of  the  central  figures  defined  by  the  fierce  light  that 
beat  upon  the  throne  of  the  great  Augustus?  Why,  he 
knows  that  Virgil  was  born  in  the  country  on  his  father's 
farm  near  Mantua;  that  he  was  of  the  yeoman  class,  and 
glad  of  it,  as  he  suggests  by  his  praise  of  rustic  life  in  his 
Eclogues  and  Georgics.  His  father,  though  '  probably ' 
a  plain  man,  discovered  his  son's  talent  and  put  him  to 
school  at  Cremona,  and,  'it  may  be  inferred/  went  with 
him  there.  At  sixteen  the  boy  assumed  the  toga  virilis, 
and  'shortly  after'  went  to  Milan,  where  he  kept  at  his 
studies  till  he  went  to  Rome  two  years  later.  'A  powerful 
stimulus  must  have  been  given  to  his  genius'  when  he 
found  himself  there  in  the  dawn  of  the  Augustan  age,  'as 
may  be  inferred'  from  certain  lines  in  the  first  Eclogue. 
He  studied  under  a  rhetorician  who  was  'probably'  the 
teacher  of  the  future  emperor,  and  became  personally  de 
voted  to  the  Epicurean  philosophy  under  Siron;  but,  if 
we  may  believe  his  verse,  preferred  poetry.  The  Eclogues 
allude  to  his  circumstances  and  feelings  nine  years  later, 
but  'of  what  happened  to  him  in  the  interval  during 
which  the  first  civil  war  took  place  and  Julius  Caesar  was 
assassinated,  we  have  no  indication  from  ancient  history  or 
his  own  writings';  but,  'we  may  conjecture'  that  he  'was 
cultivating  the  woodland  muse '  in  his  native  region  north 

of  the  Po.     In  his  first  poem  there  is  full  record,  however, 

54 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

of  what  he  felt  at  being  expelled  from  his  ancestral  farm, 
which  was  confiscated  to  provide  land  for  the  soldiers  of 
the  Triumvirs.  Augustus  officially  reinstated  him,  but 
when  Virgil  offered  to  resume  possession  the  soldier 
whom  the  place  had  been  allotted  to,  chased  the  poet 
across  the  river,  and  Virgil  thought  it  best  to  take  his 
father  with  him  to  the  villa  of  his  old  teacher  Siron. 
Then  he  went  to  live  at  Rome,  where  he  was  welcomed 
in  the  highest  literary  circles,  and  his  Eclogues  were  pub 
lished  in  37  B.C.  He  left  Rome,  however,  and  after  longer 
or  shorter  sojourn  near  Naples  and  in  Sicily,  'it  seems 
not  unlikely'  that  he  made  a  voyage  to  Athens.  He 
spent  the  years  from  37  to  30  B.C.  in  writing  the  Georgics, 
which  he  read  to  Augustus;  and  he  spent  the  rest  of  his 
life  in  polishing  the  Mneid,  which  he  did  not  survive  to 
give  the  finishing  touches,  though  he  read  three  books  of 
the  epic  as  it  stood  to  the  emperor  and  his  family.  In 
Athens  he  met  Augustus,  who  persuaded  him  to  go  back 
to  Italy  with  him,  and  on  the  way  he  was  seized  with 
sickness  from  the  excessive  heat,  and  died  at  Brindisi. 
He  was  buried  at  Naples,  where  his  tomb  was  long  re 
garded  with  religious  veneration  and  visited  as  a  temple. 
1  That  veneration  .  .  .  was  greater  than  what  we  find  at 
taching  to  the  actual  memory  of  any  ancient  poet,  though 
the  mystery  connected  with  the  personality  of  Homer  ex 
cited  a  greater  curiosity/  This  is  all,"  Bacon  ended,  closing 
and  dropping  the  volume,  which  instantly  resumed  its  pon 
derability  and  fell  to  the  ground  with  a  heavy  thud,  "this 
is  all  the  careful  encyclopedist  has  to  tell  of  the  life  of  the 
most  famous  and  beloved  poet  of  antiquity,  except  the  fact 
that  he  was  so  much  dissatisfied  with  the  $neid,  which 
he  had  to  leave  uncorrected,  that  he  instructed  his  literary 
executors  to  suppress  it,  and  it  would  have  been  lost  to  the 
world  if  Augustus  had  not  interfered  and  commanded  its 

preservation.     In  fact,  Virgil's  wish  for  the  destruction 
5  55 


THE   SEEN    AND   UNSEEN 

of  his  immortal  epic  may  be  compared  to  the  indifference 
of  our  friend  here  to  the  fate  of  his  dramas,  which  he  left 
to  the  ignorance  of  the  printer  and  the  ravage  of  any 
editor  who  chose  to  collect  and  publish  them." 

"The  things  had  served  their  turn  in  the  theater  which 
they  were  made  for;  in  those  days  when  we  literally  made 
our  plays,  and  we  scarcely  supposed  people  would  care 
to  read  them."  As  he  said  this,  Shakespeare  sat  down  on 
one  of  the  garden  seats,  and  watched  with  a  scarcely  con 
scious  smile  the  antics  of  the  much-carbuncled  gardener 
who  had  been  pouring  hot  water  down  the  wasps'  nest  in 
his  flower  bed  and  was  stiffly  capering  about  with  the  ket 
tle  in  his  hand  to  avoid  the  pursuit  of  the  exasperated 
insects.  As  he  finally  disappeared  in  the  direction  of  the 
kitchen,  Shakespeare  burst  into  a  shout  of  laughter  in 
audible  except  to  us  who  were  sharing  his  invisibility. 

"May  I  ask,"  Bacon  demanded,  severely,  "what  is  so 
very  diverting  in  the  suggestion  I  have  made?  We  will 
not  pursue  it  if  you  prefer  not." 

"Oh,  it  isn't  that,"  Shakespeare  choked  out,  "it's  the 
ga-ga-gardener  and  the  wa-wa-wasps!" 

"I  hadn't  noticed,"  Bacon  returned,  with  dry  offence. 
"You  must  excuse  my  inadvertance,"  and  he  moved 
toward  the  house. 

"Oh,  come,  come!"  Shakespeare  called  to  him.  "Don't 
go!  What  you  have  been  telling  us  is  something  I 
hadn't  the  least  notion  of.  I  beg  your  pardon.  Do 
go  on!" 

"There  is  no  more,"  Bacon  hesitated,  "at  least  about 
Virgil,  but  I  had  thought  of  making  a  parallel  of  your  own 
case  with  his — " 

"Well,  if  it  won't  tire  our  American  cousin — or  nephew 
— or  brother — or  uncle — or  fellow-subject — or  fellow- 
citizen,  here?" 

"Not  at  all.  I  shall  be  delighted.  I  think  it's  ex- 

56 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

tremely  interesting,"  I  made  haste  to  offer  in  placation 
of  our  friend,  who  was  still  loath  to  forego  his  offense. 

"It's  this  recurrent,  this  almost  essential  light-minded 
ness  of  yours  which  spoils  so  much  of  your  noblest  tragedy! 
You  let  your  motley  come  clowning  in  at  the  highest  mo 
ments,  and  to  get  a  laugh  from  the  pit  you  turn  your 
Macbeth,  your  Hamlet,  your  Romeo  and  Juliet  into  farce. 
If  you  had  taken  my  advice,  or  would  take  it  now — but 
you  wouldn't,  you  won't!"  Shakespeare  waited  patient 
ly,  and  Bacon,  after  he  had  fretted  his  grudge  away, 
resumed.  "What  struck  me  was  the  poverty  of  the 
known  events  in  Virgil's  life.  Of  these  there  are  scarce  a 
baker's  dozen  of  the  most  elementary;  the  rest  is  supposi 
tion  and  inference.  There  is  nothing  to  show  the  char 
acter  or  nature  of  the  man  in  the  events;  nothing  that 
might  not  have  happened  to  any  other  poet.  It  was  a 
good  deal  so  with  Ben  Jonson  himself,  who  was  one  of 
the  most  self-advertised  poets  of  our  time.  We  know 
that  he  was  a  quick-tempered,  violent-natured,  warm 
hearted,  censorious,  generous,  pedantic,  humorous,  wrong- 
headed,  delightful  old  fellow — " 

"He  Was,  he  was!"  Shakespeare  assented,  with  enjoy 
ment.  "And  he  is  much  the  same  still.  Of  course,  he 
has  learnt  rather  more  self-control,  but  he's  'rare  Ben' 
yet,  and  will  be  to  all  eternity,  I  hope." 

"Yes,"  Bacon  continued,  "but  what  do  we  know  of  the 
intimate  facts  of  his  life,  the  facts  that  shape  and  nature 
a  man,  the  personal  facts?  We  know  that  he  was  a  post 
humous  child,  and  that  his  mother,  who  married  a  second 
time,  is  supposed  to  have  loved  him  in  a  passionate  way 
of  her  own,  insomuch  that  when  he  was  sentenced  to  have 
his  nose  and  ears  slit  for  '  insulting  the  Scotch '  in  a  play, 
she  prepared  a  poison  which  she  meant  to  drink  with  him 
before  the  sentence  could  be  carried  out.  His  stepfather 

is  'saicj'  to  have  forced  him  to  lay  a  few  bricks  after  Ben 

57 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

left  school,  to  remind  him  of  their  trade  of  bricklayer; 
and  Ben  is  'supposed'  to  have  lived  unhappily  with  his 
wife,  whom  he  mentions  coldly,  and  parted  from  after 
five  years,  though  he  remembers  her  tenderly  in  the  verses 
commemorating  the  two  children  they  lost.  It  is  certain 
that  he  was  sent  to  Westminster  school,  but  'it  is  stated' 
only  on  ' unsatisfactory  evidence'  that  he  went  afterward 
to  Cambridge.  He  killed  a  fellow-actor  in  a  duel  and 
barely  escaped  hanging;  in  prison  he  was  visited  by  a 
Roman  Catholic  priest  and  was  converted  to  his  faith, 
which  twelve  years  later  he  renounced  because  of  the 
Papist  complicity  with  the  Gunpowder  Plot.  He  went 
soldiering  in  the  Netherlands,  and  came  back  to  the 
bricklaying  of  his  youth;  later  he  traveled  governor  to 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  son  in  France.  For  the  rest,  he 
lived  and  wrote  and  drank  in  London;  but  the  encyclo 
pedist  doubts  whether  in  the  last  of  his  visits  to  Stratford 
he  was  the  cause  of  our  friend  here  overdrinking  himself 
and  taking  the  fever  he  died  of.  These  are  all  the  inti 
mate  facts  which  his  biographer  can  lay  his  hands  on,  and 
a  fair  half  of  them  he  doubts,  or  supposes.  Merely  in  num 
ber — not  to  speak  of  significance — they  do  not  compare 
with  the  well-known  and  generally  accepted  facts  of  the  life 
of  our  friend  here,  who  is  imagined  to  have  left  little  or  no 
material  for  the  biographer — " 

"I  wish,"  Shakespeare  said,  starting  restively  to  his 
feet,  "that  my  biographers  would  agree  to  forget  some  of 
the  most  intimate  facts  of  my  life.  /  have  willingly  done 
so,  and  I  remember  them  only  when  I  find  them  recurring 
in  print.  Then  I  feel  like  denying  them." 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  philosopher  glared  at  the  poet  from  under  brows 
which  met  in  a  frown  such  as  he  used  perhaps  to  bend 
upon  suitors  in  court  while  his  pockets  bulged  with  their 
offerings  to  justice.  His  pipe  had  now  gone  out,  and  he 
went  about  lighting  it  with  the  effect  of  having  quite 
finished  what  he  had  to  say. 

"Well!"  the  poet  prompted. 

"There  is  nothing  more,"  the  philosopher  answered,  in 
cold  resentment,  and  began  pulling  at  his  pipe. 

"But  that  parallel?" 

"I  thought  you  preferred  your  trifling." 

"My  joke  is  dear  to  me,  but  not  so  precious  as  your 
interest  in  my  biography. " 

"And  I,  if  I  may  venture  to  entreat  your  lordship,"  I 
put  in,  "should  think  myself  greatly  the  loser  if  I  failed 
of  your  parallel.  I  don't  think  anything  like  it  has  been 
offered,  yet,  in  proof  of  our  friend's  authorship  of  his 
plays." 

His  lordship  continued  silent  for  a  little  longer;  then 
he  severely  resumed.  "I  had  thought  of  enforcing  the 
parallel  with  other  examples,  but  it  is  not  necessary,  and 
I  will  only  suggest  in  refutation  of  the  argument  that 
Shakespeare  could  not  have  written  Shakespeare  because 
he  has  left  no  handwriting  of  his  behind  except  two  or  three 
autographs  differently  spelled  from  each  other,  that  we 
have  no  signature  of  Chaucer's,  though  he  was  an  eminent 
diplomat  and  went  upon  many  embassies  to  the  con- 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

tinent,  requiring  signatures.  It  is  not  certainly  known 
who  his  father  was,  or  precisely  his  wife.  None  of  his 
poems  survive  in  his  own  manuscript,  and  it  isn't  known 
which  were  irrefutably  his;  just  as  some  of  our  friend's 
plays  here  are  of  doubted  origin,  and  none  were  printed 
from  his  own  handwriting.  Your  two  poets  are  alike, 
moreover,  in  certain  alleged  violations  of  the  law :  Shake 
speare  is  said  to  have  stolen  deer,  and  Chaucer  to  have 
taken  part  in  the  abduction  of  a  young  girl;  probably 
neither  did  either;  but  the  interesting  fact  is  that  uncer 
tainties  cloud  the  history  of  the  courtier  as  well  as  the 
life  of  the  player.  Seven  years  of  Chaucer's  time  left 
no  record,  just  as  nine  of  Shakespeare's  left  none.  But 
when  you  come  to  speak  of  the  paucity  of  biographical 
material  in  the  case  of  our  friend  here,  I  would  have  you 
contrast  its  abundance  with  the  want  of  facts  concerning 
most  of  his  eminent  contemporaries  and  predecessors. 
It  is  perfectly  known  who  his  father  and  mother  were  and 
their  origin.  The  year  and  almost  the  day  of  his  birth 
are  known,  but  not  so  clearly  the  place;  though  it  was 
certainly  Stratford  and  certainly  not  the  Birthplace.  The 
day  of  his  baptism  is  ascertained,  and  when  and  where  he 
went  to  school — almost.  There  is  no  doubt  whom  he 
married,  and  if  not  where,  then  when,  and  reasonably  why. 
At  fixed  dates  his  three  children  are  baptized.  In  a  cer 
tain  year  and  month  he  goes  to  London,  where  he  becomes 
not  so  much  personally  a  holder  of  gentlemen's  horses  at 
the  theater,  as  a  sort  of  horseholding  syndicate  or  Trust, 
and  an  employer  of  skilled  labor  in  the  boys  trained  by 
himself  for  the  purpose.  From  this  business  eminence  he 
sinks  to  be  a  poet,  a  playwright,  and  even  a  player  by  dis 
tinctly  dated  gradations,  and  is  enviously  attacked  for 
his  success  in  the  drama  by  a  brother  dramatist.  The 
dates  of  his  successive  plays  are  fairly  approximated  in 

their  production  at  the  theater  and  their  reproduction 

60 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

from  the  press,  and  the  time  of  his  buying  New  Place  is 
fixed.  His  unbroken  relation  to  Stratford  during  his  Lon 
don  years  can  be  traced  by  the  dates  of  his  various  pur 
chases  and  lawsuits  and  participation  in  local  affairs. 
His  devotion  to  his  family  expressed  itself  in  all  filial, 
paternal  and  fraternal  sorts;  he  marries  his  daughters 
to  his  liking;  he  stands  godfather  to  his  friends7  chil 
dren;  when  his  mother  dies  he  yields  to  the  homesickness 
always  in  his  heart,  and  comes  back  to  end  his  days  in 
Stratford.  He  wishes  to  be  a  principal  citizen  and  a  man 
of  social  standing;  he  buys  tithes  and  joins  in  fencing 
the  people's  commons;  he  rejoices  in  a  coat-of-arms,  and 
likes  to  be  known  as  William  Shakespeare,  Esquire,  trust 
ing  that  his  low-class  career  as  actor-manager  in  London 
will  not  be  remembered  against  him.  But  he  likes  to  be 
remembered  by  his  old  dramatic  friends,  and  he  welcomes 
Michael  Drayton  and  Ben  Jonson  to  New  Place,  where  he 
lives  till  his  death  in  peace,  if  not  affection,  with  his  wife. 
He  even  engages  to  excess  in  their  jolly  riot,  for,  as  a 
Vicar  of  Stratford  recalls  some  fifty  years  later,  '  Shake 
speare,  I?en  Jonson,  and  Drayton  had  a  merie  meeting, 
and  itt  seems  drank  too  hard,  and  Shakespeare  died  of  a 
fevour  there  contracted.'  Others,  however,  hold  that  his 
fever  was  a  filth  disease  contracted  from  the  pigsties  that 
then  ran  the  length  of  New  Place  in  Chapel  Lane.  But  it 
is  enough,"  his  lordship  ended,  with  a  dignified  gesture 
of  his  pipe-stem,  "that  he  died  full  of  glory  and  honor." 
Shakespeare,  who  had  been  listening  more  and  more 
restively,  wincing  from  time  to  time  at  facts  which  I 
thought  his  guest  might  better  have  spared  him,  rose  and 
stretched  himself,  saying:  "I  didn't  realize  before  that  I 
was  such  an  unquestionable  celebrity."  Then,  as  I  rose 
too  and  thanked  his  lordship  for  his  convincing  state 
ment,  but  said  I  must  really  be  going,  Shakespeare,  as  if 
be  would  escape  some  merited  reproach,  said  he  would  go 

61 


THE    SEEN   AND    UNSEEN 

a  little  way  with  me,  if  I  didn't  mind,  and  we  hurried  off 
together.  We  had  not  got  as  far  as  the  bridge  when  he 
answered  the  tacit  question  in  my  mind,  as  the  custom 
is  among  disembodied  spirits. 

"Yes,  he  is  often  very  tiresome  company,  especially 
when  he  gets  to  harping  on  my  record  and  its  sufficiency 
for  all  the  practical  purposes  of  the  biographer.  But  I 
haven't  the  heart  to  stop  him,  for  I  know  it  forms  his 
escape  from  grievous  thoughts  about  himself  which  other 
wise  he  could  not  bear." 

"You  mean  his  conviction  of  bribery,  and  his  dishonor 
before  the  world;  that  heavy  fine,  which  was  the  least  of 
his  burdens,  and  his  deposition  from  the  high  office  which 
he  had  held  with  such  pride  and  splendor?" 

"No,  no;  not  chiefly  that.  He  settled  with  that  when 
he  owned  it,  saying,  'I  do  plainly  and  ingenuously  con 
fess  that  I  am  guilty  of  corruption,  and  do  renounce  all 
defense/" 

"But  why  not  supremely  that  immeasurable  fall?"  I 
insisted.  "Above  all  other  great  men — for  he  was  one 
of  the  very  greatest — he  'loved  the  world  and  the  world's 
law'  of  luxury  and  state  and  flattery.  He  crawled  and 
truckled  to  those  who  could  forward  him,  and  he  took  their 
snubs  and  insults  almost  with  thanks,  as  for  so  much 
condescension.  He  knew  himself  the  sublimest  intellect 
in  the  realm;  why  should  he  show  himself  the  basest 
lickspittle  in  it  to  that  old  harridan  Elizabeth  and  that 
slobbering  pedant  James,  and  his  own  ungracious  kins 
men,  their  ministers?" 

"Ah,  it's  a  strange  anomaly,"  my  companion  answered. 
"He  is  a  riddle  that  I  don't  often  attempt  to  read.  But 
what  I  say  is  that  he  has  long  ago  ceased  to  feel  shame  for 
his  dishonor,  but  when  he  returns  to  earth  the  ingratitude 
and  treachery  he  used  toward  those  who  trusted  him  are 

again  an  unquenched  fire  in  his  memory.     He  still  writhes 

62 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

in  pity  of  the  poor  man  Aubrey,  whose  bribe  he  took  and 
then  pronounced  'a  killing  decree'  against  him.  And  his 
friend  Essex,  who  enriched  him  with  gifts  and  never 
tired  of  showing  him  good  will  and  doing  him  good  deeds, 
and  whom  he  repaid  by  hunting  him  to  his  death  and 
stopping  every  chance  of  mercy  which  the  law  might  have 
left  him — in  the  remembrance  of  Essex  he  suffers  as  if 
Essex  would  be  living  yet  but  for  his  pitiless  pursuit.  I 
don't  know  how  he  bears  it;  and  since  he  finds  some  little 
respite  from  his  remembrance  of  the  wrong  he  did  by 
righting  the  little  wrong  which  he  thinks  has  been  done 
me,  I  can't  deny  it  him." 

"No,  of  course  not,"  I  agreed,  "but  I  could  have  wished 
that  his  argument  had  been  a  little  less  in  the  nature  of 
special  pleading." 

"You  mean  in  regard  to  that  famous  old  saying  of 
Hallam's  that  'no  letter  of  Shakespeare's  writing,  no 
record  of  his  conversation  has  been  preserved?'  Why,  I 
thought  he  met  that  fairly.  People  used  not  to  keep  their 
correspondents'  letters,  and  I  was  never  a  great  corre 
spondent:  But  the  encyclopedist,  whom  he  mainly  fol 
lowed  in  his  argument,  cites  as  to  my  conversation  the 
interview  my  kinsman  Thomas  Greene  had  with  me  in 
London  concerning  the  inclosure  of  the  common  lands, 
at  Stratford  and  Welcombe;  and  there  were  other  meet 
ings  with  the  friends  of  the  scheme,  when  I  told  them  dis 
tinctly  that  I  'was  not  able  to  favor  the  inclosing  of  Wel 
combe.'  This  is  not  only  proof  that  I  could  and  did  talk 
with  people  and  that  they  remembered  it;  but  it  ought 
to  be  remembered  by  those  who  imagine  I  cared  nothing 
for  the  poor,  that  in  these  meetings  I  defended  their  in 
terests  and  not  mine,  in  opposing  the  fencing  of  the  com 
mon  lands." 

There  was  more  warmth  of  feeling  in  Shakespeare's 

voice  than  he  usually  allowed  to  be  felt  in  it ;  for  the  most 

63 


THE    SEEN    AND   UNSEEN 

part  it  was  expressive  of  a  kindly,  if  ironical  humor,  as 
though  the  matter  in  hand  were  not  worth  very  serious 
consideration,  though  he  liked  playing  with  it.  I  was 
about  to  say  that  I  was  glad  to  have  him  express  himself 
so  decidedly,  in  this  connection,  when  I  was  aware  of 
being  alone,  and  I  pursued  my  way  across  the  bridge  and 
kept  on  in  one  of  those  rambles  through  the  town  which 
were  mostly  as  aimless  as  they  were  eventless. 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 


CHAPTER  IX 

IT  was  more  than  a  week  after  we  were  placed  in  our 
pleasant  hotel  in  Stratford  before  we  began  to  look  about 
us  in  the  lovely  country  round.  The  town  was  enough, 
with  its  openness,  its  brightness,  its  smiling  kindness;  for 
the  time  we  could  not  wish  for  anything  more,  and  we 
never  found  anything  better,  though  we  found  abundant 
beauty  in  the  farms  and  villages  of  the  Midland  slopes  and 
levels.  Everything  in  Stratford  was  homelike,  and  noth 
ing  more  so  than  the  Cochin-China  Tea  Rooms,  where  we 
took  our  luncheon,  with  their  blaze  of  a  small  flower 
garden  behind  and  the  little  arbor  at  the  kitchen  door 
where  you  might  have  a  table  if  you  liked.  The  coffee 
was  very  "good  there,  for  a  wonder  in  England,  and  the 
buttered  brown-bread  toast  was  an  example  to  the  scorched 
and  refrigerated  slices  of  cottage-loaf  prevailing  else 
where  on  the  island;  and  after  ordering  these  it  was  pleas 
ant  to  keep  along  Church  Street  past  the  low-roofed  and 
timbered  almshouses  to  the  shop  where  first  green  gages 
and,  after  their  season  was  past,  large  red  Victoria  plums 
were  to  be  had.  Such  a  crooked  little  shop,  with  half  its 
stock  in  two  unrelated  windows,  and  the  rest  in  baskets 
behind  and  under  the  counter  that  began  elbowing  you 
our  of  doors  as  soon  as  you  got  in,  and  ceased  treading  on 
breathless  small  boys  with  pennies  in  their  hands,  could 
have  been  rightly  served  only  by  two  such  scrupulous 
sisters,  or  at  the  worst  sisters-in-law,  who  would  not  de 
fraud  us  of  a  single  plum  in  the  half-pound.  The  fruit 

65 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

was  grown,  they  said,  in  their  own  orchards  just  out  of 
town,  but  which  way  we  never  understood,  and  it  was  in 
no  wise  related  to  the  fruit  of  their  next-door  neighbor, 
as  he,  equally  with  themselves,  assured  us.  We  always 
hurried  back  to  the  Cochin-China  with  it  lest  the  toast 
or  the  coffee  should  be  cold ;  but  it  never  was,  for  at  noon 
day  the  little  tables  were  all  full,  and  the  service,  though 
reliable  and  smiling,  was  not  eager.  We  had  a  table  in 
the  back  room  looking  out  on  the  kitchen  arbor,  and 
though  we  were  but  three  we  kept  it  against  all  comers 
till  one  overcrowded  day  a  young  German  priest  came  in 
with  three  nuns,  and  looked  so  hopelessly  at  a  three-chair 
table  that  we  could  not  do  less  than  offer  him  ours,  which 
was  for  four  chairs.  They  took  it  with  such  bows  and 
thanks  as  ought  to  have  made  us  ashamed,  but  only  made 
us  proud  of  our  simple  civility,  and  anxious  to  found  a 
claim  to  acquaintance  on  it.  We  did  not  push,  though  I 
tried  hard  to  believe  that  it  was  my  duty  to  tell  them  I 
knew  a  little  of  the  German  they  were  speaking,  and  I 
only  eavesdropped  as  hard  as  I  could  till  a  decent  chance 
of  warning  them  offered.  I  suppose  that  there  are  some 
times  gayer  parties  of  young  people,  but  I  have  seldom 
heard  more  joyous  and  innocent  laughter  than  that  of 
those  gentle  sisters  in  their  angelic  flirtation  with  that 
handsome  young  priest.  He  could  speak  English,  it 
seemed,  from  his  constantly  saying,  "All  right,  all  right, " 
and  presently  it  seemed  that  the  sisters  could.  All  three 
of  them  were  lovely  and  two  were  beautiful,  and  all  three 
again  were  as  glad  as  children;  and  none  of  the  fashionable 
ladies  we  had  left  in  London  seemed  so  perfectly  ladies  as 
these  dear  sisters  in  their  starched  white  coifs  under  their 
black  veils  and  in  their  broadcloth  robes  falling  round  them 
in  sculpturesque  folds.  When  some  offered  courtesy  broke 
what  ice  was  left  between  us,  the  young  priest  was  proud 

to  tell  us  that  the  sisters  were  from  a  Catholic  college  in 

66 


AJ1   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

England,  and  he  went  further  and  said  that  the  least  young 
of  the  three  was  "a  very  learned  sister."  This  brought 
us  somehow  to  the  question,  always  rife  at  Stratford,  of 
the  Baconian  authorship  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  and  the 
sister  was  of  such  a  decided  mind  upon  it  that  she  was  not 
surprised  so  much  as  grieved  to  learn  that  the  poor  lady 
who  first  mooted  it  had  died  in  a  lunatic  asylum. 

I  could  have  wished  that  Shakespeare,  and  even  Bacon, 
had  been  there  to  enjoy  the  learned  sister's  rejection  of 
the  theory,  but  I  saw  neither  of  them  for  some  time  after 
that  day  at  their  riverside  villa.  In  the  mean  time  we 
saw  a  great  many  fellow-Americans,  not  indeed  at  the 
Cochin-China  Tea  Rooms,  where  they  came  very  sparing 
ly,  but  at  our  hotel,  where  they  abounded,  mostly  in  motors 
with  the  dust  of  hurried  travel  upon  them.  I  suppose 
that  the  motor-face,  of  whatever  nationality,  is  not  en 
gaging;  but  when  its  composite  expression  was  added 
to  the  effect  of  something  intense  and  almost  fierce  that 
seems  to  characterize  our  native  physiognomy  abroad,  one 
could  wish  that  it  was  not  always  so  self -evidently  Ameri 
can  in  those  who  wore  it.  If  the  automobile  conditions 
are  everywhere  such  as  to  rob  the  motorist's  presence  of 
charm,  to  these  compatriots'  hardness  of  face  was  added 
that  peculiar  stoniness  of  voice  which  is  so  often  noticeable 
in  us,  and  which  made  them  as  wounding  to  the  ear  as  to 
the  eye.  They  overwhelmingly  outnumbered  the  English, 
who  lurked  apart  in  the  hotel  parlor  while  the  Americans 
prevailed  in  the  hallway.  It  must  have  been  difficult 
for  the  English  to  bear  this,  and  I  heard  two  of  them  re 
venging  themselves  one  day :  "  It  seems  to  me  I  have  heard 
that  .voice  before."  "Yes;  that's  one  of  the  educated 
ones."  This  voice  was  the  cat-bird  twang  of  so  many  of 
our  women,  and  it  sometimes  made  itself  heard  in  the 
dining-room,  where  the  dress  of  the  speaker  was  not  al 
ways  of  that  superior  taste  which  we  used  to  pride  our- 

67 


THE    SEEN   AND    UNSEEN 

selves  upon  in  our  women.  It  was  difficult  to  choose  one 
day  between  the  plumage  of  a  lady  who  wore  a  single  tall 
ostrich  feather,  full  and  blue,  curling  far  aloof  from  her 
hat,  and  the  feather  of  another  lady  exactly  the  same  in 
outline,  but  as  to  the  final  curl  black  and  skeletonized. 
There  was  in  most  of  these  motoring  women  an  effect  of 
not  being  sure  that  they  had  got  all  they  had  come  for, 
or  of  not  quite  knowing  what  they  had  come  for,  and  in 
their  men  a  savage,  suspensive  air,  as  if,  having  given 
Europe  a  fair  trial,  as  a  relief  from  business,  or  as  a  pleas 
ure  to  their  wives  and  daughters,  they  were  going  to  see 
about  it  when  they  got  home.  Perhaps  all  this  is  unfair; 
and  perhaps  it  would  not  be  just  to  judge  our  national 
nature  from  the  expression  of  the  average  automobile 
people  at  home. 

They  had  been  motoring  through  England  and  Wales, 
as  they  would  report  when  they  got  back,  and  were  suffer 
ing  a  mental  and  moral  dyspepsia  from  bolting  the 
beautiful  scenery  untasted  as  they  could  seize  it  with 
distorted  eyes,  much  as  people  seize  the  events  of  a 
three-ring  circus.  We  ourselves  became  of  their  class 
for  several  runs  into  the  country  about,  but  besides  not 
being  able  to  afford  the  folly,  we  really  preferred  the  neat 
victorias  which  they  have  cheap  at  Stratford,  but  not  so 
cheap  as  good.  In  one  of  these,  apt  for  our  little  party 
of  three,  we  could  find  ourselves  domesticated  in  the  land 
scape  round  about.  The  country  was  of  the  same  bright 
openness  as  the  town,  and  one  could  as  easily  love  it.  I 
had  supposed  it  leveler  than  it  proved,  though  it  was 
level  enough,  and  where  it  waved,  it  waved  with  harvests 
of  wheat  and  rye,  golden  and  glossy  green,  rippling  as  the 
surfaces  of  the  long  ground  swells  at  sea  do.  In  the  dis 
tance,  the  uplands  were  of  a  tender  blue,  and  in  the  dim 
air  the  trees  mounted  like  smoke  from  the  hedges.  The 
Avon  and  other  vague  streams  idled  about,  and  there  were 

68 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

bridges  and  farm-houses  and  villages  that  one  passed  with 
out  much  worrying  over  their  identity,  though  no  doubt 
they  each  had  an  identity.  They  had  their  bowering 
orchards  of  gnarled  apples  and  of  wonderful  plums,  green 
and  blue  and  red,  which  were  as  much  an  example  to 
American  plums  as  the  wheat-fields  to  our  wheat-fields. 
We  praised  one  of  the  thickest  harvests  to  a  conversible 
farmwife,  but  she  said,  "Oh  no,  that  was  not  good  wheat; 
you  could  see  between  the  stems."  The  region  is  not 
only  a  good  farming  country,  however,  but  a  good  hunt 
ing  country,  and  after  the  pleasures  of  the  Shakespeare 
month  end  in  Stratford  the  savage  joys  of  the  chase  begin 
for  the  boyish  men  and  women  who  ride  to  hounds  through 
the  sweet,  insulted  scene. 

In  England  many  things  change,  suddenly,  thoroughly, 
but  other  things  remain  unchanged,  usages  projected  from 
the  dead  past  like  the  light  from  planets  extinct  long  be 
fore  it  has  reached  the  earth.  They  still  have  kings  and 
queens  in  that  romantic  island,  and  lords  and  ladies  who 
have  no  more  relation  to  its  real  life  than  gnomes  and 
fairies,  but  must  be  indulged  with  the  shows  and  games 
invented  for  them  in  the  days  when  people  believed  in 
them,  and  not  merely  made-believe.  Now  and  then  a 
grim  smile  of  derision  which  is  also  self-derision  breaks 
over  the  good-natured  visage  of  the  make-believers  and 
is  accepted  by  the  universal  tolerance  as  of  right  and 
reason.  Hard  by  a  fine  old  stone  bridge,  where  the  Avon 
found  us  in  the  country  half  an  hour  after  we  had  parted 
from  it  in  town,  stood  a  pleasant  inn,  with  lawns  and  po 
tential  tea-gardens  round  it,  which  called  itself  The  Four 
Alls,  and  illustrated  its  name  by  a  sign-board  bearing  the 
effigy  of  the  king  who  Rules  All,  of  a  clergyman  who 
Prays  All,  of  a  soldier  who  Fights  All,  and  of  an  av 
erage  man  who  Pays  All.  These  Four  Alls  appear  to 
prevail  in  every  civilized  country,  but  they  might 


THE   SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

not  everywhere  be  painted   in  such  smiling   irony  as 
here. 

I  believe  it  was  on  our  way  home  from  visiting  the  home 
of  Shakespeare's  mother  at  Wilmecote,  that  we  stopped 
to  converse  with  the  amiable  landlord  of  the  Four  Alls 
Inn.  She  was  that  Mary  Arden  who  was  as  gently  as 
his  father  was  fiercely  named,  and  whom  one  is  willing 
to  think  as  gently  natured  as  her  name.  The  Welsh  are 
beginning  to  boast  her  of  their  race,  as  if,  not  content 
with  the  honor  of  the  greatest  living  Briton,  they  must 
needs  claim  through  her  the  greatest  Briton  dead;  but 
if  Welsh,  she  was  doubtless  of  one  of  the  many  princely 
Welsh  lines,  of  no  apparent  grandeur  in  its  exile.  The 
Arden  cottage,  at  any  rate,  is  a  little  wayside  thing,  belted 
in  with  a  bright-flowered  narrow  garden,  and  it  leans  its 
timbered  wall  somewhat  wearily,  as  from  its  weight  of 
four  hundred  years,  toward  the  earth.  All  the  world 
knows,  which  knows  so  much  too  little  of  her  world- 
famous  son,  that  Mary  Arden  brought  her  husband  this 
cottage  and  its  sixty  acres,  under  her  father's  will,  with 
other  lands  and  tenements  inherited  from  her  two  sisters; 
and  if  not  of  princely  state,  she  was  of  a  comfortable  yeo 
man  lineage.  When  she  went  to  live  at  Stratford  it  is 
pleasant  to  believe  that  she  left  her  father  and  mother 
living  at  Wilmecote,  and  keeping  up  the  ancestral  farm 
there  in  better  state  than  one  sees  it  now.  The  cottage 
and  the  decrepit  barns  and  stables,  with  their  sagging 
walls  and  slanting  roofs,  inclose  a  sufficient  farmyard, 
with  a  gate  giving  into  a  venerable  orchard,  which  tempted 
but  did  not  prevail  with  us  to  penetrate  its  grass-grown 
aisles.  One  likes  to  leave  such  places  to  their  solitude; 
and  besides,  the  tenant  of  the  cottage,  who  promptly  de 
manded  sixpence  each  for  letting  us  see  it,  was  not  sure 
that  her  summer  lease  included  a  sight  of  the  orchard. 

She  led  us  up  and  down  over  the  homelike  cottage,  which 

70 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

opened  in  an  unexpected  number  of  comfortable  little 
rooms;  these,  opening  casually  from  one  to  another,  had 
been  modernized,  but  not  too  modernized,  with  sparing 
English  grates,  where  once  the  freer  fires  must  have  been 
of  wood.  Several  staircases  led  to  the  upper  rooms;  the 
thick  walls  showed  their  oaken  beams;  the  narrow  sash 
were  leaded;  the  floors  were  stone.  It  was  very  home 
like,  very  suitable  for  a  grandfather  and  grandmother, 
and  I  was  thinking  that  if  Shakespeare  used  to  come  out 
from  Stratford  to  see  the  old  people  there  he  must  have 
had  glorious  times,  when  the  inaudible  voice  at  my  ear 
from  the  invisible  presence  at  my  shoulder,  which  I  had 
now  come  to  expect  at  any  thought  of  it,  said:  "Yes,  far 
more  glorious  times  than  any  I  ever  had  in  London  at 
the  height  of  what  I  thought  my  prosperity.  My  mother 
used  to  bring  me  here  when  I  was  too  little  to  know  how 
homesick  she  was  for  it,  and  then  sometimes  my  father 
brought  me,  and  by  and  by  I  came  alone.  I  dogged 
my  grandfather's  heels  all  over  the  farm  till  I  came  to 
know  every  inch  of  it,  but  I  seem  never  to  have  lost  any 
moment  of  my  grandmother's  cooking.  When  I  went 
away  I  was  in  paunch  and  pocket  full  of  the  gingerbread 
which  she  made  better  than  any  one  else  in  the  world;  I 
missed  none  of  the  wild  berries  in  their  season  or  the  earlier 
and  later  apples  in  the  orchard,  or  the  plums  that  over 
hung  the  house- wall.  I  knew  the  dogs  and  horses  and 
cows;  I  was  not  too  proud  to  be  friends  with  the  pigs.  I 
robbed  the  wild  birds'  nests,  and  I  didn't  neglect  the  par 
tridges  and  pheasants  even  when  I  came  to  understand 
that  they  were  sacred  to  the  gentry;  it  was  the  begin 
ning  of  my  poaching,  I  dare  say.  I  swam  in  a  famous 
pool  which  there  was  beyond  the  orchard  in  summer,  and 
in  winter  I  risked  a  ducking  on  its  thin  ice.  I  loved 
Stratford,  and  my  mother,  and  even  my  father,  but  a 

boy  is   king   in  his   grandmother's   house,   and   I   bore 
6  71 


THE   SEEN   AND   UNSEEN 

sovereign  rule  here.  Yes,  those  were  glorious  times 
indeed." 

As  we  drove  home  to  Stratford,  the  afternoon  grew 
lovelier  and  lovelier,  with  a  mild  sun  and  a  few  large  white 
clouds  lounging  in  a  high,  blue  sky.  In  the  hedges  the 
hips  of  the  swestbriers  were  reddening  and  the  hawthorn 
berries  were  already  scarlet.  The  blackberries  were  ripe 
where  the  canes  were  broken  down  by  the  pickers.  The 
wheat  was  mostly  cut,  and  in  the  farmyards  where  it  had 
been  threshed  the  ricks  of  bright  new  straw  were  neatly 
thatched.  We  came  from  Wilmecote  to  the  Alcester  road 
by  a  lane  that  was  almost  wild,  and  out  through  a  deep, 
peaceful  valley;  when  we  reached  the  highway  two  little 
girls  in  pinafores  were  standing  beside  it,  one  with  her 
pretty  arm  up  to  shield  her  eyes  from  the  westering  sun; 
and  in  all  our  course  we  met  only  two  motors,  and — 

"Yes,  yes!  It  is  peaceful,  peaceful,  utterly  charming!" 
I  said  to  the  presence  which  had  mounted  with  us  for 
the  homeward  drive,  of  course  not  incommoding  us  in 
the  least;  but  suddenly  it  had  become  an  absence,  in  the 
fashion  of  such  presences  as  soon  as  you  take  your  mind 
off  them;  they  are  so  delicately  fearful  of  seeming  in 
trusive. 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 


CHAPTER  X 

NEARLY  every  evening  of  every  week  of  August  we 
strolled  out  after  dinner  from  our  hotel  to  the  corner  of 
New  Place,  where  Shakespeare  died,  down  Chapel  Lane 
to  the  theater  where  he  still  lived  in  those  plays  of  his 
which  were  given  every  second  night  and  every  third 
afternoon.  They  were  the  most  vital  experiences  of  the 
commemorative  month,  and  the  Memorial  Theater  found 
in  their  succession  a  devotion  to  its  office  beyond  the  ex 
plicit  intention  of  its  giver.  That  is  what  I  say  now, 
trying  to  do  justice  to  the  esthetic  and  civic  fact,  but  to 
be  honest  nothing  of  the  kind  was  in  my  mind  at  the  time. 
I  only  thought  how  charming  it  was  to  be  going  to  a 
Shakespeare  play  on  terms  so  quite  unlike  going  to  any 
other  play  in  any  other  place.  The  days  were  shortening 
in  August,  but  the  twilights  were  still  long,  and  they  were 
scarcely  half-way  spent  when  they  saw  us  to  the  theater 
with  all  the  Stratford  world,  gentle  and  simple.  The 
way  across  the  street  at  the  foot  of  the  lane  was  guarded 
by  a  single  policeman  who  sufficed  to  save  us  from  the 
four  or  five  motors  glaring  with  their  premature  lamps, 
and  panting  after  their  run  from  Warwick  or  Leaming 
ton.  Without  his  help  one  could  have  safely  passed 
between  the  family  carriages  bringing  the  nearer  neigh 
bors  to  rites  which  the  whole  region  frequented  rather 
more  than  if  they  were  of  religious  claim.  But  by  far 
the  greatest  number  of  us  came  on  foot,  and  when  the 
play  was  done,  we  went  home  by  the  same  means  under 
the  moonlight,  in  the  informality  of  morning  dress  unless 

we  had  bought  places  in  the  first  row  of  the  balcony.  The 

73 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

orchestra  implied  no  such  claim,  but  partook  of  the  in 
formality  of  the  pit  behind  it,  which  there  as  in  most 
English  theaters  continues  the  tradition  now  lost  to  our 
theaters.  The  seats  were  not  reserved  there,  nor  in  the 
upper  galleries,  which,  however  sparse  the  attendance  else 
where  might  be,  were  always  packed  by  the  undying  love 
of  the  people  for  the  universal  poet. 

Sometimes  when  I  fancied  the  poet  there,  in  escape 
from  a  heavy  evening  with  Bacon  in  their  riverside  cot 
tage,  I  liked  to  suppose  a  generous  regret  in  him  for 
not  having  anticipatively  requited  this  affection  by  ten 
derer  treatment  of  the  lower  classes  in  his  plays.  But 
then  I  reflected  that  the  English  lower  classes  have  always 
preferred  to  have  the  smooth  things  given  to  the  upper 
classes,  especially  on  the  stage,  and  that  they  probably 
found  their  account  there  in  imagining  themselves  such 
or  such  a  lord  or  lady  in  the  scene,  and  fitting  their  friends 
and  neighbors  to  the  humbler  parts.  Once  I  reminded 
him  of  Tolstoy's  censure  of  his  want  of  kindness  toward 
them,  and  he  said  he  had  been  too  nearly  of  them,  in  his 
own  life;  he  satirized  his  own  faults  in  them;  and  what 
literature  was  to  do  was  to  join  political  economy  in 
making  men  so  equal  in  fortune  that  there  could  be  no 
deformity,  no  vulgarity  in  them  which  sprang  from  the 
pressure  of  need  or  the  struggle  of  hiding  or  escaping  its 
effects.  The  vanity  of  poverty  was  as  ridiculous  as  the 
vanity  of  riches,  and  might  be  as  fairly  laughed  at.  His 
defense  did  not  quite  satisfy  me,  and  I  said  I  would  hand 
him  over  to  Mr.  Shaw.  But  at  the  Memorial  Theater  I 
could  not  imagine  any  dramatist  but  himself,  or  hardly 
any  moralist.  In  the  wonderfully  even  performance  of 
the  plays  throughout,  the  art  of  the  actors  did  not  slight 
the  nature  of  the  characters  studied  from  low  life;  it  was 
rendered  with  a  reality  that  convinced  of  the  dramatist's 

truth,  if  that  ever  needed  argument.     No  part  was  slight- 

74 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

ed,  whether  high  or  low,  but  one  could  have  more  pleas 
ure  of  the  upper  classes  because  their  reality  was  less 
tedious  than  that  of  the  churls  and  clowns  who,  if  any 
thing,  superabound  in  the  Shakespeare  plays;  he  might 
contend  that  they  superabound  in  life.  This  evenness 
was,  of  course,  the  effect  of  unsparing  vigilance  in  the  ad 
mirable  over-artist  whose  conscience  was  felt  in  every 
moment  and  every  detail.  His  whole  professional  career 
had  been  directed  to  the  Shakespeare  drama  which  he 
imagined  giving  with  an  unselfishness  unknown  save 
among  its  most  impassioned  devotees.  The  range  of  the 
plays  was  suggestive  if  not  fully  illustrative  of  the  poet's 
largest  range.  There  were  "The  Merchant  of  Venice," 
"As  You  Like  It,"  "Hamlet,"  "Much  Ado  About  Noth 
ing,"  "Twelfth  Night,"  "Richard  the  Second,"  "The 
Taming  of  the  Shrew,"  "King  John,"  "Romeo  and 
Juliet,"  and  "The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor";  and  of 
these  I  saw  such  I  had  seen  seldomest,  but  now  I  am  sorry 
I  did  not  see  them  all.  They  were  all  well  done,  and  in 
censure  you  could  say  no  worse  than  that  some  were  done 
better  than  others.  If  I  do  not  name  the  over-artist  it 
is  because  I  am  naming  nobody  in  a  record  which  is  keep 
ing  itself  in  a  high  fantastic  air,  and  as  much  aloof  from 
every-day  matter-of-fact  as  if  it  were  one  of  those  ro 
mantic  fictions  I  have  always  endeavored  to  bring  into 
contempt.  He  took  such  peculiarly  difficult  parts  as 
Richard  the  Second,  or  King  John,  with  an  address 
that  made  them  live  so  in  the  imagination  as  to  win 
your  pity  where  your  sympathy  was  impossible;  he 
was  specially  trained,  if  not  natured,  for  tragedy,  but 
he  could  for  instance  abandon  himself  unselfishly  to 
the  comedy  of  such  a  part  as  Doctor  Caius  in  "The 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor."  His  reward  was  to  make  it 
wildly  delightful,  and  delightful  a  play  which  I  had  always 

imagined  a  heavy  piece  of  voluntary  drolling,  but  must 

75 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

always  think  of  hereafter  as  charming,  full  of  the  human 
nature  of  its  day  and  of  all  time.  I  should  have  liked  to 
make  my  apologies  to  Shakespeare  if  I  had  found  him  in 
the  audience  as  often  as  I  found  him  on  the  stage.  I 
should  have  had  to  confess  that  mostly  I  found  his 
comedies,  in  the  reading,  poor  stuff,  as  compared  with  his 
tragedies  and  histories.  But  he  usually  came  with  Bacon, 
whom  I  should  have  to  join  in  blaming  those  lighter  plays. 
When  it  was  a  question  of  the  authorship  Bacon  was 
stanchly  Shakespearean,  but  that  once  granted  he  was 
somewhat  less  Shakespearean  than  such  an  ardent  fellow- 
townsman  of  the  poet  as  I  had  now  become,  could  desire. 
There  was  a  supreme  moment  of  King  John  when  I  most 
longed  for  the  author  to  enjoy  it  with  me.  The  playing  was 
of  that  beautiful  evenness  which  left  no  part,  and  no  part 
of  any  part  unstudied,  and  which  makes  us  rather  sorry, 
in  its  steady  glow,  for  the  meteoric  splendors  of  our  Ameri 
can  acting.  After  all,  Shakespeare  was  an  Englishman, 
and  I  suppose  he  spoke  with  an  English  voice  in  his  plays, 
so  that  if  I  were  an  Englishman,  too,  I  might  be  embold 
ened  to  claim  that  until  you  had  heard  the  voices  of  the 
English  actors  in  the  several  parts  you  had  not  heard  his 
characters  speak  as  Shakespeare  heard  them.  To  be 
sure,  Shakespeare  himself  spoke  with  a  Warwickshire  ac 
cent,  and  though  he  had  probably  worn  it  off  in  his  long 
London  sojourn  he  must  have  returned  to  it  after  he  came 
back  to  Stratford,  as  Bacon  had  noted  in  our  first  night 
with  them  in  Cheltenham.  Still,  I  should  say  that  broad 
Warwickshire  was  truer  to  the  accents  which  his  inner  ear 
perceived  than  those  of  our  Middle  West,  or  Philadelphia, 
or  Broadway,  or  even  Boston  accent,  or  of  them  all  syn- 
thetized  in  the  strange  blend  which  passes  on  our  stage 
for  the  English  voice. 

In  that  supreme  moment  scene,  costume,  action,  ex 
pression,  were  all  so  proper,  so  exquisitely  harmonized 

76 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

that  though  it  was  by  no  means  the  most  important  scene, 
or  one  of  the  most  important  scenes,  I  thought  that  if  the 
poet  could  have  witnessed  it  his  heart  must  have  swelled 
almost  to  bursting  for  joy  in  the  perfection  of  it.  I 
tried  to  compel  his  presence  by  that  longing  which  I  had 
several  times  found  effective  with  him,  but  he  would  not 
respond,  and  I  was  thrown  back  upon  the  question  how 
much  or  little  a  great  dramatist  of  the  past  might  really 
care  for  the  modern  perfection  of  the  upholstering  which 
so  stays  and  comforts  the  imagination  of  the  average 
theater-goer,  say  the  tired  business  man  or  the  over-in- 
tellectualized  club  woman.  Shakespeare,  if  he  had  come 
at  my  call,  might  have  said  that  the  action  and  expression 
were  richly  enough  for  him,  and  these  were  what  so  chiefly 
satisfied  him  in  the  highest  moments;  that  the  cos 
tuming  and  the  setting  were  for  others  and  not  for  him; 
that  for  him  these  were  like  the  dress  of  a  gentleman 
which  if  fit  was  the  last  thing  you  noticed  in  his  presence. 
Then  I  might  have  come  back  at  him  with  the  argument 
that  if  he^had  been  imagining  a  theater  nowadays  he  would 
not  have  been  content  with  less  than  the  perfection  of  that 
entourage.  At  this  he  must  have  allowed  that  as  a  drama 
tist  he  owed  more  than  his  answer  implied  to  the  arts 
which  the  Shakespeare  scholarship  of  such  a  manager  as 
this  had  summoned  to  his  help.  As  himself  an  actor- 
manager,  and  used  to  dealing  with  the  work  of  others  and 
adapting  it  to  the  needs  of  his  theater,  he  would  have  ap 
proved  of  this  actor-manager's  cutting  of  his  plays,  which 
I  liked  so  much  that  when  I  recurred  to  the  printed  text 
I  found  little  cause  to  desire  it  in  its  entirety,  though  I  do 
not  make  so  bold  as  to  say  that  the  cuts  were  unerringly 
those  which  Shakespeare  would  have  made  himself.  I 
only  say  something  like  this;  and  that  in  "The  Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor/'  for  instance,  there  was  no  line  which 
I  would  have  had  restored  for  the  stage. 

77 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

It  was  the  personal  companionableness  of  Shakespeare, 
his  modest,  his  humorous  capacity  of  self-forgetfulness 
which  made  him  so  delightful.  I  am  sure  that  in  his  visits 
to  the  Memorial  Theater  (which  perhaps  he  did  not  visit 
oftener  because  of  a  natural  diffidence)  he  would  have 
liked  as  much  as  I  did  its  quality  of  home,  the  charming 
sense  of  hospitality  and  domesticity,  in  which  people  met 
each  other,  and  nodded  and  smiled  from  orchestra  and  bal 
cony,  and  went  about  between  the  acts  shaking  hands, 
like  neighbors  akin  in  their  common  love  of  the  Supreme 
Poet  whom  we  so  felt  there  the  brother  of  us  all.  It  was 
not  my  happy  fortune  to  be  there  the  last  night  of  the 
happy  season,  but  I  have  heard  that  the  genial  audience 
then  for  farewell  took  hands  all  round  the  theater  and 
sang  "Auld  Lang  Syne"  together. 

That  must  have  been  beautiful,  but  what  event,  what 
moment  of  the  joyous  season  was  not  beautiful?  When 
we  came  out  of  the  theater  at  the  modest  hours  which  the 
theater  keeps  in  Stratford  we  continued,  as  it  were,  a 
part  of  the  cast  in  whatever  play  we  had  been  seeing,  and 
under  the  stars  of  the  dim  English  heaven,  or  its  mild 
moon,  we  took  our  way  up  the  footpath  of  Chapel  Lane, 
or  confided  ourselves  fearlessly  to  the  roadway,  where  a 
few  large-eyed  motors  purred  harmlessly  among  us.  I 
may  not  claim  that  they  paused  to  let  us  look  about  for 
the  lame  cat  of  New  Place  gardens,  or  deny  that  they 
sometimes  urged  us  on  with  those  porcine  gutturals 
peculiar  to  motors.  But  we  heard  in  them  only  the 
ghostly  echoes  from  the  styes  which  fenced  New  Place 
along  Chapel  Street  and  Chapel  Lane  in  Shakespeare's 
time.  There  was  no  ghostliest  taint  from  these  in  our 
twentieth-century  air,  but  the  honeyed  odor  of  the  sweet 
alyssum  from  the  beds  beside  the  gates  of  New  Place 
gardens  stole  through  the  grating  and  haunted  us  to 
our  dreams. 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 


CHAPTER  XI 

TWICE  a  week,  in  the  gardens  of  the  theater,  there  were 
Morris  Dances  and  Country  Dances  by  the  pupil-teachers, 
whom  we  could  see  every  morning  at  the  lectures  in  the 
Parish  Parlor.  These  joyous  events  were  called  by  the 
severe  and  self-reproachful  name  of  Demonstrations,  but 
by  any  name  they  would  have  been  enchanting,  as  in  fact 
their  subtitles  were.  What  could  be  more  quaintly  dear 
than  Beaux  of  London  City,  by  the  young  men,  or  Brighton 
Camp  by  the  girls,  or  The  Rose,  or  Confess  by  both  youths 
and  maidens?  There  was  a  sword  dance,  and  there  were 
Morris  Dances,  when  the  dancers  beat  the  sward  with 
their  feet  to  make  the  bells  on  their  legs  help  rouse  the 
mother  earth  to  their  adoration.  For  a  contrast  to  the 
lusty  blonde  English  girls,  there  were  two  lithe  Greek 
maidens  come  from  their  far  shores  to  fly  like  Monads 
on  a  Grecian  urn  in  the  wild  figures  of  those  northern 
dances;  but  best  of  all  there  was  a  veteran  Morris  Dancer 
now  getting  in  years,  who  had  been  famous  in  his  day, 
and  who  gave  the  dance  with  a  sort  of  dying  vigor  and  a 
stiff  grace  of  gesture  very  pathetic  and  appealing. 

The  sun  blazed  down  on  the  place,  but  there  was  life 
in  the  air,  and  by  the  Avon's  banks  the  feathery  reeds 
swayed  and  tilted  in  the  light  wind  and  waved  us  to  the 
stream.  The  water  was  alive  with  the  punts  and  skiffs 
and  canoes  which  are  coming  and  going  on  it  the  whole 
summer;  my  muse  must  not  be  too  fastidious  to  sing  also 

the  steam  and  motor  barges  which  all  too  swiftly  but  very 

79 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

cheaply  bear  the  poorer  pleasurer  to  the  head  of  naviga 
tion  a  few  miles  up.  But  we  were  not  so  poor  as  that, 
and  we  took  a  boat,  ample  but  not  beyond  the  strength 
of  a  half -grown  boy  who  at  times  let  his  head  hang  heavily 
on  his  breast  as  if  overwearied  with  rowing.  Perhaps  it 
was  only  a  mute  entreaty  for  our  larger  largesse  in  the  end, 
and  if  so  I  must  allow  that  it  was  successful;  but  it  was 
not  practised  so  much  going  as  coming,  and  we  mingled 
even  gaily  with  the  other  boats  and  punts.  In  England 
when  a  youth  and  maiden  go  on  a  water  excursion  it  is, 
as  I  have  already  noted,  the  convention  for  the  youth  to 
lie  flat  in  the  bottom  of  the  punt  and  for  the  maiden  to 
stand  or  sit  at  his  head  and  push  the  craft  along.  If  it 
is  two  girls  who  man  the  boat,  then  the  weaker  does  the 
work,  and  the  stronger  does  the  rest;  or  if  they  are  both 
very  strong,  then  they  both  lie  idling  over  books,  and 
there  is  no  telling  how  they  get  to  a  given  point.  We 
easily  passed  these  brave  or  dear  crews,  and  contrived 
not  to  be  run  down  by  the  populous  launches  that 
passed  us. 

At  first  as  you  ascend  the  Avon  after  you  have  cleared 
the  two  bridges  arching  the  stream,  there  are  pretty  villas 
on  the  right,  and  on  the  left  there  are  pleasant  meadows 
where  on  the  afternoon  of  our  voyage  we  saw  some  of 
the  folk-dancers,  who  were  encamped  there,  going  about 
their  light  housekeeping  among  the  tents,  in  the  short 
skirts  and  the  long  stockings  of  their  folk-dancing  costume. 
On  the  other  shore  the  villa  gardens  came  down  to  the 
water,  and  when  we  were  past  the  gardens  both  shores 
were  overhung  with  willows  which  twisted  their  roots 
together  and  kept  the  banks  firm  against  the  freshets 
seasonably  overflowing  them.  Under  the  braided  roots 
the  water-rats  had  their  holes,  but  kept  acceptably  within 
them,  for  water-rats  when  visible  are  a  very  loathsome 

sight,  and  I  should  be  sorry  to  associate  them  with  the 

80 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

river  which  Shakespeare  was  the  Swan  of.  Other  swans 
are  not  conspicuous  in  my  remembrance,  though  there 
must  have  been  swans,  unless  they  had  all  merged  their 
dying  notes  in  the  exultant  strains  of  the  surviving  gramo 
phones.  Of  the  gramophones  there  is  no  manner  of 
doubt;  but  we  were  chiefly  bent  in  ascending  the  river 
on  arriving  at  a  certain  tea-garden  which  we  had  heard 
was  to  be  found  midway  of  our  course.  We  found  it,  but 
found  it  shut,  and  then  there  was  nothing  for  us  but  to 
row,  or  make  our  boy  row,  a  mile  further  to  Teddington, 
where  he  was  sure  of  a  tea-house  which  was  open. 

While  he  remained  with  his  boat  at  the  landing  there  we 
took  the  path  which  led  past  picturesque  thatched  cottages 
and  beside  green  meadows,  ushered  onward  by  sign 
boards  to  the  inn  where  we  were  to  find  tea,  as  we  hoped 
in  the  moment  of  its  "first  sprightly  running."  But 
when  we  got  to  the  inn  it  appeared  that  the  gas-fixtures 
had  suffered  some  disaster,  and  were  undergoing  repairs, 
with  the  tea-room  in  the  possession  of  several  plumber- 
like  men  whose  presence  boded  no  refection  in  it.  Instead 
we  were  offered  a  small  dining-room,  so  dismal  in  dark- 
red  paper  and  so  haunted  with  the  memories  of  bad  din 
ners,  that  we  implored  the  kind,  incapable-looking  host 
to  let  us  have  our  tea  in  the  garden.  We  then  found  our 
selves  under  a  tree  in  the  yard  behind  the  house  at  a  table 
which  had  known  so  much  rustic  jollity  that  it  bore  traces 
of  the  riot  ineffaceable  by  the  wet  cloth  smeared  over  it 
by  the  slattern  maid.  She  tried  to  hide  them  with  the 
table-cloth,  but  the  table-cloth  was  in  league  with  them, 
and  showed  worse  stains,  which  in  turn  would  not  be 
hidden  by  the  plates  and  cups  dispersed  among  them. 
There  we  sat  and  waited,  realizing  more  and  more  that 
the  garden  was  an  innyard  and  the  innyard  was  a  farm 
yard  with  evidence  of  every  variety  of  poultry  in  it. 

Feathers,  with  straw  and  chips,  such  as  chickens  delight 

81 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

in,  seemed  to  grow  up  out  of  the  gravel  under  our  feet. 
There  had  been  a  dog  which  went  and  a  cat  which  came 
and  went,  and  then  there  began  to  be  more  and  more 
cocks  and  hens  which  remained  from  the  beginning. 
While  we  waited  and  waited  long,  the  chickens  were  rein 
forced  in  closing  upon  us  by  troops  of  ducks  and  geese 
from  some  reserve  of  poultry  beyond  the  stables.  A  man 
opened  a  gate  from  the  adjacent  field,  and  entered  with  a 
flock  of  sheep;  in  the  pasture  beyond  we  heard  the  lowing 
of  cows  and  the  neighing  of  horses,  which  put  their  heads 
over  the  bars  as  if  to  urge  a  passage  to  our  table;  we  heard 
the  note  of  remoter  swine  in  unseen  pens;  and  we  began  to 
ask  each  other  when  we  were,  if  ever,  going  to  have  tea. 
Secretly  we  had  each  begun  to  hope  we  were  never  going 
to  have  it,  and  inquiry  at  the  kitchen  developed  the  fact 
that  the  range  had  sympathized  with  the  gas-fixtures, 
and  the  fire  was  in  doubt  whether  it  would  burn  or  not. 
We  decided  we  could  not  wait  the  result  of  its  misgiving, 
and  began  some  polite  pour  parlers  with  the  landlord,  we 
insisting  that  we  would  pay  for  our  tea  and  go  without 
waiting  for  it,  and  he  insisting  that  we  should  not  pay  for 
it  without  having  it.  In  the  end  we  paid  and  escaped 
triumphing  without  our  tea,  but  feeling  rather  sorry  that 
we  had  got  the  better  of  that  poor  man;  though  now, 
upon  reflection,  I  am  not  sure  that  we  had  got  the  better 
of  him. 

It  was  an  afternoon  of  anomalies,  which  in  that  neat, 
well-ordered  England,  where  custom  and  tradition  prevail 
as  with  the  authority  of  holy  writ,  were  startling  past  all 
former  experience.  When  once  your  mind  is  set  on  tea 
in  England,  you  are,  though  an  alien,  as  inflexible  as  any 
born  to  the  manner;  and  when  we  had  got  back  to  our 
boat  we  made  our  boy  make  all  haste  down  the  Avon  to 
the  pretty  tea-garden  we  had  noted  lurking  with  its  tables 

among  leaves  and  flowers.     But  as  we  came  in  full  sight 

82 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

of  that  pretty  tea-garden  we  suffered  a  moment's  dismay 
at  the  sight  of  a  punt  lolling  full-length  at  the  landing, 
and  apparently  not  proposing  to  move  away  for  us.  A 
youth  of  the  usual  years  and  an  unusually  elderly  maiden, 
or  say  matron,  occupied  themselves  with  tea  and  cake 
in  it;  and  when  it  reluctantly  got  from  the  landing,  and 
we  mounted  to  the  garden,  we  were  almost  held  from 
ordering  tea  for  ourselves  by  the  unprecedented  spectacle 
of  an  elderly  gentleman  standing  by  a  tea-laden  table, 
and  serving  from  it  the  youth  and  the  maiden,  or  matron, 
in  the  punt  with  tea  and  bread-and-butter  and  ultimately 
cake,  quite  as  if  he  had  himself  been  in  the  punt  and  they 
serving  him.  Whether  to  attribute  the  strange  fact  to 
the  all-pervading  balefulness  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George  or  not 
we  did  not  know.  Perhaps  with  his  equal  taxes  and  old- 
age  pensions  he  was  really  bringing  the  landed  gentry  to 
things  like  this;  for  this  gentleman  looked  landed  gentry 
and  county  family,  if  ever  a  gentleman  did.  I  must  not 
push  the  matter  too  far;  I  must  not  say  he  looked  a  title, 
even  so  low  as  baronet;  but  under  that  he  might  have 
been  anything  but  a  knight  recognized  for  some  service 
to  civilization  He  was  perfectly  dressed  in  the  well- 
studied  propriety  of  an  English  gentleman  out  for  an 
afternoon's  pleasure,  down  to  his  gaiters;  he  stood  at 
his  quiet  ease  beside  that  table,  pouring  the  tea  and  cut 
ting  the  cake,  with  a  rather  dreamy  air,  unconscious  of 
the  curiosity  to  know  how  he  happened,  which  tormented, 
and  has  never  ceased  to  torment  us  since,  concerning  him. 
From  time  to  time  he  carried  a  cup  or  a  plate  to  the  people 
in  the  punt,  which  had  come  back  to  its  moorings,  and 
leaned  over  to  bestow  it  on  one  or  other  of  them,  who 
took  it  with  equal  calm,  and  let  him  go  on  serving  them. 
But  it  was  no  servile  service  which  he  offered  and  they 
accepted;  it  was  rather  the  courtesy  of  host  and  guests 

of  the  tacit,  unflourishing  fashion  of  English  society  where 

83 


THE   SEEN   AND   UNSEEN 

to  make  the  thing  done  seem  not  to  have  been  done  is  the 
fine  ideal.  No  word  passed  between  them;  the  youth 
did  not  look  an  invalid,  the  matron  not  quite  the  mother 
of  so  old  a  youth.  But  in  any  case  why  was  not  she  serv 
ing  the  two  men?  Why  was  that  elder  serving  her,  if 
for  any  reason  he  was  serving  the  youth? 

The  tea-maiden  ran  across  the  street  and  fetched  our 
refection  from  the  inn  there,  and  spread  our  table  beside 
the  barrier  opposite  this  strange  gentleman's,  equally 
overhung  with  plum-trees  and  dividing  him  as  ours  divided 
us  from  borders  of  gay  marigolds  and  phlox  and  patches 
of  cabbage  and  cauliflower  in  the  gardens  beyond.  The 
yellow-jackets,  which  the  English  call  wasps,  came  in 
stinctively  at  the  call  of  our  jam,  and  we  saw  them  hover 
ing  about  his  fearless  head  as  he  stooped  over  his  table 
or  moved  from  it  to  feed  or  slake  the  famine  of  the  people 
in  the  punt;  and  when  we  had  escaped  unstung  from  our 
own  refreshment,  we  left  him  with  his  gentle  riddle  un 
read,  and  let  our  droop-headed  boy  pull  us  back  to  the 
boat-house  where  we  had  taken  him.  The  tea  at  Tedding- 
ton  had  been  disappointing  if  it  could  be  said  to  have 
been  at  all;  and  that  last  tea,  which  had  certainly  been, 
had  left  us  with  a  thirst  which  I  do  not  know  how  we  shall 
ever  quench.  Yet  that  excursion  up  and  down  the  Avon 
had  been  so  surpassing  an  ideal  of  an  excursion  on  the 
Avon,  that  we  said,  "Now  we  should  certainly  do  it 
every  day."  The  surprising  part  is  that  we  never  did 
it  again. 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  days  at  Stratford  were  so  full  of  breakfasting, 
lunching,  and  dining,  with  lectures  on  folk  dancing  and 
folk  singing,  and  debates  on  ethical  and  esthetical  matters 
between,  and  drives  into  the  country,  and  afternoon  teas 
and  calls,  that  it  was  with  difficulty  I  could  squeeze  in  or 
out  an  hour  for  so  favorite  diversion  of  mine  as  the 
Moving  Picture  Show.  But  at  last  the  hour  lent  itself 
to  the  desire,  and  I  went  to  that  Picture  Theater  which 
does  not  feel  itself  too  presumptuous  in  almost  fronting 
the  Shakespeare  Monument.  Perhaps  it  is  kept  in  counte 
nance  by  the  badness  of  the  monument  in  one  art  and  its 
own  excellence  in  another,  but  if  I  ventured  into  the 
Picture  Theater  without  knowing  its  grounds  for  self- 
confidence  my  own  trust  in  it  was  rewarded  by  the  prev 
alence,  so  flattering  to  my  patriotism,  the  almost  ex 
clusive  prevalence,  of  American  films  in  its  events.  The 
events  were  of  that  romantic  character  so  easily  attrib 
utable  to  the  life  of  our  Far  West,  and  especially  that  life 
as  it  was  touched,  by  the  only  a  little  more  distinctively 
romantic  life  of  our  aborigines,  still  supposed  to  linger  in 
a  tribal  condition  before  merging  in  our  body  politic  as 
landholders  in  severalty  and  prospective  citizens.  In  this 
condition  they  were  provisionally  making  war  on  the 
white  men,  galloping  round  on  their  ponies  along  the  brows 
and  summits  of  hills  which  threw  them  into  strong  relief, 
and  permitted  them  a  splendor  of  action  equally  glorious 

in  advance  and  retreat.    Their  forays  were  connected  with 

85 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

the  love-interest  embodied  in  the  reciprocal  passion  of  a 
young  lieutenant  and  the  daughter  of  the  commanding 
general,  who  conspired  with  an  elderly  colonel  to  frustrate 
their  affection  by  throwing  the  lieutenant  into  the  power 
of  the  savages,  and  securing  his  betrothed  for  his  ranking 
officer.  The  betrayal  and  the  rescue  were  effected  with 
the  incessant  discharge  of  firearms,  sensible  to  the  eye 
only,  between  Indians  and  cowboys  and  cavalrymen, 
which  eventuated  in  the  triumph  of  the  American  forces 
with  much  waving  of  star-spangled  banners. 

The  audience  was  composed  almost  wholly  of  school 
children;  I  was  the  only  spectator  distinctly  in  the  decline 
of  life;  and  among  the  children  there  was  one  of  years  so 
few  and  sensibilities  so  tender,  that  in  spite  of  his  sym 
pathy  with  the  American  forces,  he  damped  the  general 
joy  by  bursting  into  a  cry  of  alarm  at  the  moment  of 
their  triumph,  and  having  to  be  led  howling  up  the  aisle 
into  the  safety  of  the  outer  air.  His  grief  touched  me  so 
that  I  could  not  take  the  pride  I  might  have  wished  in 
the  fact  that  of  the  six  dramas  presented  that  afternoon 
four  were  shown  from  American  films,  and  two  from 
French  ones,  with  not  a  single  English  film  among  them, 
not  even  of  those  municipal  receptions  of  royalty  which 
the  English  fondness  commonly  wreaks  itself  in  reproduc 
ing  on  the  cinematographic  screen,  with  little  variety  of 
costume  for  the  king  and  an  inflexible  devotion  to  one 
walking  -  dress  and  one  austere,  reproving  hat  in  the 
queen. 

I  could  not  remain  after  this  tragic  incident,  and  I  fol 
lowed  the  emotional  sufferer  out,  hoping  to  supply  the 
reassurance  which  seemed  to  fail  from  his  more  immediate 
friends.  But  before  I  reached  the  door  I  was  aware  of 
one  of  these  mystical  presences  at  my  shoulder  which  I 
was  now  grown  used  to,  and  which  I  supposed  of  course 

was  Shakespeare.     On  the  contrary,  as  I  looked  round,  I 

86 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

saw  that  it  was  Bacon,  and  I  said  with  surprise:  "Oh! 
You  here?" 

"Yes,"  he  said,  with  some  resentment  of  my  tone,  "I 
am  here  a  good  deal,  first  and  last." 

"Yes?"  I  queried,  to  gain  time,  without  committing 
myself  further. 

"Why  don't  these  stupid  people  say  something  to  com 
fort  that  little  boy?"  he  demanded,  without  noting  my 
query,  and  I  perceived  that  his  shadowy  shape  was  in  a 
quiver  of  compassion  for  the  sensitive  youngster.  This 
ought  not  to  have  surprised  me,  and  upon  reflection  I 
perceived  that  it  was  the  logic  of  a  man  who  had  often 
been  so  pitiless  in  this  life  that  he  should  be  all  pity  in 
another  life ;  that  would  be  not  only  his  eager  atonement, 
his  expiation;  it  would  be  his  privilege,  his  highest  happi 
ness.  To  go  through  eternity  compassionating  every  form 
of  suffering  here  would  be  a  refuge  from  vain  regrets,  and 
such  solace  as  comes  to  us  whenever  we  disown  some  mis 
deed  by  doing  the  opposite.  I  wished  to  speak  with  him 
on  this  point,  but  I  saw  he  was  not  concerned  with  me; 
he  was  somehow  addressing  himself  to  the  terrified  child, 
who  suddenly  stopped  his  roaring  and  looked  round  smil 
ing  as  if  he  expected  to  see  a  kind  face  at  his  shoulder. 
I  knew  he  would  see  none,  and  Bacon  instantly  ceased  to 
occupy  himself  with  him. 

"Yes,"  he  resumed  with  me,  "I  think  there  is  a  great 
deal  to-be  hoped  from  this  sort  of  show,  and  I  am  inter 
ested  in  every  advance  made  in  its  art.  If  I  were  in  au 
thority  here  I  would  not  permit  these  spectacles  of  battle, 
or  any  terrifying  circumstance.  There  is  an  infinite 
range  of  subjects  which  could  be  shown  for  the  instruction 
as  well  as  the  delight  of  those  little  ones;  all  'the  fairy 
tales  of  science,'  all  the  works  of  nature,  all  the  beautiful 
and  cheering  events  of  history." 

"I'm  afraid  the  Shakespeareans  would  say,"  I  answered, 
7  87 


THE   SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

"that  you  don't  show  the  author-actor's  instinct  in  that 
notion,  and  that  such  a  notion  alone  was  enough  to  dis 
prove  your  friends'  claim  to  your  authorship  of  the  plays. 
You  know  how  bloody  his  scene  is — and  advisedly  so. 
We  like  a  noble  terror — all  but  our  young  friend  here." 

He  did  not  reply,  but  said :  "  I  believe  that  in  the  United 
States  you  now  have  the  characters  in  the  films  speaking: 
talking-movies,  I  think  you  call  them.  You  are  very 
graphic,  you  Americans!" 

"Oh,  thank  you!  They're  not  quite  satisfactory,  yet. 
There  is  speech,  but  it  doesn't  seem  somehow  to  come 
from  the  speakers,  though  their  lips  move." 

"You  must  trust  your  Mr.  Edison  to  bring  the  affair 
to  perfection.  A  most  ingenious  man;  a  sort  of  up-to- 
date  version  of  your  great  Franklin.  I  don't  wonder 
your  people  value  him  and  have  voted  him  one  of  your 
supreme  benefactors." 

"Your  lordship  must  excuse  me,"  I  said,  "if  I'm  still 
a  little  surprised  that  a  philosopher  like  yourself,  who 
changed  the  whole  course,  if  not  the  nature,  of  philosophy, 
should  be  so  much  interested  in  people  who  are  after  all 
merely  inventors,  however  beneficent." 

"Have  you  read  your  Macaulay  to  so  little  purpose," 
he  rejoined,  "as  not  to  have  seen  how  he  distinguishes 
between  the  new  and  the  old  philosophies  in  his  essay  on 
me  by  pointing  out  that  my  philosophy  dedicated  itself 
to  use,  while  that  of  the  Greeks  disdained  the  practical  as 
something  beneath  the  notice  of  the  idealist?" 

"Yes,  yes,"  I  said,  "I  certainly  remember  that;  and 
here  I  hesitated  from  an  embarrassing  recollection  of  the 
severity  of  Macaulay's  essay  on  the  facts  of  Bacon's 
career. 

"I  know  he  was  terribly  hard  upon  me  in  the  first 
half  of  his  essay,"  Bacon  returned,  as  if  I  had  spoken. 

"But  he  let  me  have  the  last  word,  as  it  were.     The  whole 

88 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

second  half  of  his  essay  is  devoted  to  the  recognition  of 
my  claim  upon  the  forgiveness — I  won't  say  gratitude — 
of  mankind  because  of  my  wish  to  serve  them  in  any 
humblest  fashion,  of  my  will  always  to  hitch  a  star  to  my 
wagon,  if  I  may  transpose  the  saying  of  your  Emerson :  a 
very  different  sort  of  idealist,  by  the  way,  from  Plato." 

"I  know/'  I  answered.  "I  thought  that  fine  in  Ma- 
caulay.  It  was  only  fair,  though,  to  let  you  have  the 
last  word." 

"In  my  office  of  judge,  in  which  I  confessed  and  must 
always  confess  that  I  brought  the  judgment  seat  to  shame, 
though  I  only  did  what  the  other  judges  did  in  my  time, 
it  often  occurred  to  me  that  it  was  a  gross  injustice  in  our 
procedure  to  let  the  prosecution,  the  state,  have  the  closing 
appeal  to  the  jury.  That  should  be  the  sacred  right  of 
the  defense — " 

"Ah,  if  you  could  only  have  expressed  that  in  some 
axiom,  embodied  it  in  some  decision!"  I  exclaimed. 
"That  injustice  is  always  a  grief  to  me  whenever  I  read 
the  report  of  a  criminal  trial.  That  the  last  word  should 
be  for  the  rigor  instead  of  the  mercy  of  the  law,  that  seems 
barbarous,  atrocious." 

"But  as  we  were  saying  of  the  cinema — the  movies,  as 
you  call  it  in  your  wonderful  slang — I  believe  there  is 
indefinite  development  for  that  form  of  the  drama  in  the 
direction  of  education.  But  why  am  I  saying  this  to 
you?  You  who  first  suggested  the  notion  to  me  in  one 
of  your  papers." 

I  was  inexpressibly  flattered.  "Is  it  possible,"  I  asked, 
"that  so  great  a  man  as  you,  in  your  exalted  sphere,  keeps 
up  with  our  periodical  literature?  How  have  you  the 
time  for  it?" 

"We  have  the  eternity  for  it,"  he  said,  with  a  sad  smile 
for  the  word  play.  "Besides  you  exaggerate  my  impor 
tance  in  the  world  of  immortality.  I  assure  you  that  there 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

the  lowliest  of  our  race  who  has  only  a  record  of  humble 
goodness  counts  before  me." 

I  stood  rebuked.  "Oh,  excuse  me;  I  didn't  reflect. 
But  now  as  to  the  movies:  you  see  a  great  dramatic 
future  in  them?" 

"Ah,  that  you  must  have  out  with  Shakespeare.  You'll 
find  him  in  the  gardens  of  the  Birthplace;  I've  no  doubt 
he'll  try  to  persuade  you  that  the  Elizabethan  drama  was 
the  last  word  in  that  way." 

"Well,  Shakespeare  is  always  Shakespeare,  you  know!" 
I  said. 

"I'm  glad  he  isn't  always  Bacon,"  the  philosopher  re 
plied.  "I  shouldn't  mind  having  written  the  sonnets; 
but  the  'Venus  and  Adonis,'  the  'Lucrece,'  and  some 
of  the  plays — excuse  me!  Honestly,  would  you  like  to 
have  written  '  Pericles,  Prince  of  Tyre'  or  '  A  Comedy  of 
Errors'?" 

Before  I  could  protest  my  companion  had  left  me  to 
continue  my  way  to  the  Birthplace  alone.  It  was  only  a 
little  walk  from  the  Picture  Theater,  but  I  was  not  sur 
prised  to  find  next  morning  had  come  when  I  reached  the 
house  endeared  to  the  world  by  the  universally  cherished 
fiction  that  Shakespeare  was  born  in  it.  Thirteen  thousand 
Americans  are  said  to  visit  it  every  year,  and  I  had  already 
joined  them  twice  in  their  tacit  atonement  there  for  the 
Baconian  heresy  which  our  nation  invented.  I  had  been 
there  in  fact  only  a  few  days  before,  and  now  I  passed 
through  the  house  into  the  garden  without  staying  to  visit 
the  thronged  rooms  above  or  below.  As  I  expected  I  found 
the  shade  of  Shakespeare  in  the  shelter  of  a  far  descend 
ant  of  his  contemporary  mulberry-tree,  and  he  courteous 
ly  dematerialized  me  for  the  forbidden  passage  over  the 
grass  to  a  seat  with  him  at  its  root. 

"Well,"  he  said,  smiling,  "so  you  have  shirked  even 

the  birth-room  in  the  Birthplace  where  I  was  not  born?" 

90 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

"Yes — since  you  have  divined  it.  I  have  no  grudge 
against  that  superstition  except  that  it  has  thronged  the 
place  so  with  the  devout  that  one  can't  breathe  there 
very  well.  Besides,  I  have  done  it  twice  already." 

"And  the  Museum  and  Library,  with  the  Original  Legal 
Documents  of  the  family  possessions,  and  the  signatures 
of  my  family  (they  seem  to  have  abounded  in  autographs 
so  much  more  than  I),  and  the  early  editions  of  my  plays, 
and  my  signet-ring,  and  my  sixteenth-century  school-desk, 
and  all  the  rest  of  it?  And  the  Timber-roofed  Room  over 
head,  with  the  portraits  and  poor  old  Quiney's  begging 
letter  to  me?  And  the  Kitchen  and  the  Living-room, 
where  we  used  to  feed  and  foregather?" 

"Yes;  and  revered  everything  with  unquestioning 
faith." 

"Well,  why  shouldn't  you,  if  you  believe  in  me?  Of 
course  I  wasn't  born  in  my  Birthplace,  but  I  lived  most  of 
my  boyhood  in  this  house — or  till  I  escaped  to  London, 
some  say  from  the  law,  and  some  from  the  hopeless  dull 
ness  of  Stratford,  though  then  there  was  no  great  outlook 
for  me  here  with  my  wife  and  three  children.  Do  my  bi 
ographers  say  I  brought  Anne  home  here  to  live  with  me 
in  this  house?  It  would  have  been  like  my  father  to  let 
me;  he  was  a  kind  man  and  muddled  away  his  money 
like  many  another  kind  man.  He  once  said  of  me,  'Will 
was  a  good,  honest  fellow,  and  he  darest  have  cracked  a 
jest  with  him  at  any  time,'  which  has  been  a  great  comfort 
to  the  biographers  as  material  and  as  inferential  evidence 
that  I  wrote  my  plays.  And  my  mother,  my  dear  mother, 
would  have  been  a  loving  mother-in-law  to  Anne,  as 
mothers-in-law  go.  Or  do  the  biographers  prefer  to  con 
jecture  that  I  went  home  with  Anne  to  Shottery?  Been 
to  Shottery  yet?" 

"Not  this  time;   but  I'm  going." 
"Let  me  go  with  you.     I  think  I  can  make  some  things 

91 


THE   SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

clearer  to  you  there.  So  you  found  his  lordship  at  the 
Picture  Theater?" 

"Yes.  I  was  rather  surprised  of  his  interest  in  the 
movies." 

"But  why?  He  would  have  told  you  in  his  Latin  that 
he  counted  nothing  human  alien  to  him  because  he  was 
human  himself,  and  he  especially  likes  all  manner  of  new 
inventions.  He  would  rather  have  invented  your  talk 
ing-movies,  I  believe,  than  written  some  of  my  plays, 
say" — and  here  Shakespeare  smiled  knowingly  at  me — 
'" Pericles  of  Tyre'  or  'A  Comedy  of  Errors.'" 

I  laughed  with  guilty  consciousness,  but  I  said,  hardily, 
"He  couldn't  have  written  them." 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  he  returned,  and  then  he  laughed 
out.  "/  didn't,  you  know — or  not  entirely.  In  my  day 
we  took  our  own  whenever  the  other  fellows  left  it;  and 
those  are  not  the  only  plays  of  mine  which  I  didn't  write 
entirely.  Well,  it  was  an  understood  thing;  there  was 
the  raw  material,  and  each  of  us  worked  it  up  after  his 
own  fancy." 

"But  I  rather  wonder,"  I  said,  "at  Bacon's  interest 
in  those  mechanical  inventions,  which  are  a  good  deal 
in  the  nature  of  mechanical  toys.  Now  the  discovery  of 
a  general  principle,  or  the  application  of  it  to  some  use 
ful  end—" 

"I  suppose  he  thinks  harmless  amusement  and  pain 
less  instruction  are  useful  ends  to  be  reached  by  the  movies. 
And  as  he  never  could  write  plays  he  may  hope  to  supplant 
the  written  and  acted  drama  with  them.  You  know  that 
in  Italy  they've  already  supplanted  the  Marionette 
drama." 

"No!"  I  cried,  and  I  felt  a  pang  of  the  keenest  regret. 
"Not  the  wriggling  plays  of  the  time-honored  masks, 
operated  by  strings  overhead  and  vocalized  by  many 

voices  in  one,  squeaked  and  growled  from  behind — not 

92 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

Arlecchino,  and  Pantalone,  and  Brighella,  and  Facanapa 
and  II  Dottore,  and  Policinella,  and  the  rest — " 

"  Swept  by  the  board,  all  gone,  before  the  devastating 
film.  I  was  down  in  Venice,  last  night,  at  the  little 
theater  where  you  used  to  see  them,  and  they  were  doing 
a  Wild  West  movie  piece  just  such  as  you  saw  to-day; 
and  it's  the  same  everywhere  in  Italy." 

I  was  dumb  with  grief,  and  he  hastened  to  turn  the 
subject  a  little.  "But  it's  not  only  your  application  of 
mechanics  to  the  drama  which  interests  our  friend.  He's 
much  more  interested  in  your  Pure  Food  movement.  He 
doesn't  at  all  sympathize,  though,  with  the  Anti-Cold 
Storage  Crusade,  which  seems  rather  to  have  fallen 
through,  by  the  by.  He  believes  he  discovered  the  prin 
ciples  of  cold  storage.  You  know  he  brought  on  his  mor 
tal  sickness  by  leaving  his  coach  on  a  very  cold  day  and 
stopping  at  a  farm-house  to  get  a  dressed  hen  which  he 
stuffed  with  snow." 

I  said  I  thought  I  remembered. 

"The  experiment  was  perfectly  successful.  The  hen 
was  preserved  till  the  snow  thawed;  but  Bacon  took  cold 
from  the  exposure  and  died.  He  maintains  that  his  ex 
periment  was  the  first  embryonic  stirring  of  your  gigantic 
system  of  Cold  Storage." 


THE   SEEN   AND    UNSEEN 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  great  poet  began  to  walk  up  and  down  and  round 
about  over  the  grass  with  the  impunity  of  disembodied 
spirits,  and  being  dematerialized  and  devisibilized  for  our 
more  convenient  association  in  the  place,  I  joined  him 
without  attracting  the  notice  of  the  gardener,  who  was 
busy  watching  that  predatory  visitors  did  not  pillage  the 
beds  of  their  late  summer  flowers,  as  they  passed  down 
the  walk  from  the  house,  and  round  and  out  by  the  garden 
gate.  There  was  a  constant  stream  of  visitors,  and  I 
said^to  my  companion:  "How  does  all  this  affect  you, 
this  influx  and  efflux  of  people,  who  after  three  hundred 
years  have  read  you,  or  heard  of  you,  or  would  like  to 
have  read  you,  or  to  whom  you're  at  least  such  an  object 
of  interest  that  no  traveler  ought  to  miss  seeing  your 
Birthplace?" 

"How  do  you  mean?" 

"Does  their  devotion  bless  you  or  ban  you?  Is  it  a 
joy  or  a  bore?  To  me  it  looks  like  a  perpetual  afternoon 
tea  where  people  are  asked  'To  have  the  honor  of  meeting 
the  memory  of  William  Shakespeare/  and  expect  some 
how  to  feel  that  they're  with  you." 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  he  answered,  thoughtfully.  "It 
isn't  so  bad  as  to  have  to  stand  tangibly  in  the  middle  of 
the  Museum  and  shake  hands  with  them  all.  They  don't 
know  that  I'm  personally  present,  and  in  fact  I'm  not 
here,  for  the  most  part." 

"Yes,  I  understand  that.     But  I  suppose  what  I  am 

94 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

trying  to  get  at  is  whether  the  sense  of  their  admiration 
is  still  as  sweet  as  ever?  Do  you  care  for  it  as  much  as 
one  does  for  a  favorable  notice  of  his  new  book  with  sug 
gestive  extracts?  Something  like  that." 

"No,  I  shouldn't  say  I  did;  though  not  because  it's 
rather  an  old  story  now.  The  fact  is  that  their  admira 
tion  rather  searches  out  the  seamy  side  of  my  work,  where 
I've  put  it  together  and  patched  it  out  with  that  material 
of  the  older  playwrights  which  we  Elizabethans  used  to 
draw  from.  It  isn't  pleasant  to  have  people  thinking  it's 
all  mine,  you  know." 

"I  understand.  But  I  don't  understand  how  they  ever 
mistake  the  work  you  helped  yourself  to  for  your  own 
work.  It  seems  to  me  that  I  can  tell  the  borrowed  from 
the  created  down  to  the  last  syllable.  I  make  out  that 
you  helped  yourself  most  in  the  comedies;  at  least  I  have 
to  skip  the  most  in  them.  You  don't  mind  my  skip 
ping?" 

"Oh,  I  skip  a  good  deal  myself;  and  yes,  I  used  the 
paste  and  scissors  most  in  the  comedies;  scarcely  at  all 
in  the  tragedies,  even  those  dramatized  from  the  old 
Italian  stories.  But  at  the  time  I  was  doing  my  things, 
I  didn't  distinguish  much  in  the  result.  When  I  had  got 
it  on  the  stage  all  right,  it  seemed  entirely  mine,  you 
know.  It  was  when  it  came  to  printing  the  things  that 
I  began  to  feel  the  force  of  Polonius's  injunction:  ' Neither 
a  borrower  nor  a  lender  he.'  I  saw  then  that  I  had  bor 
rowed  more  than  I  should  ever  lend.  But  I  didn't  worry 
much.  You  know  I  was  rather  lazy  about  the  printed 
plays;  I  never  read  the  proofs;  and  of  course  I  never 
1  blotted  a  line'  in  the  printed  text  any  more  than  the 
written.  After  I  came  back  to  Stratford  I  left  the  whole 
affair  to  the  compositors  and  the  actors.  I  was  pretty 
thoroughly  tired." 

"I  can  imagine  that.     And  this  ever-gathering  volume, 

95 


THE   SEEN   AND   UNSEEN 

this  constantly  increasing  reverberation  of  men's  praise, 
how  does  that  affect  you?" 

"Well,  you  know,  not  so  unpleasantly  as  you  might 
think.  I  suppose  I'm  rather  simple  about  it.  My  Lon 
don  success  didn't  make  me  very  conscious,  I  believe.  At 
the  time  I  didn't  always  feel  it  was  me  they  were  praising. 
One  loses  identity  in  those  experiences.  I  didn't  always 
feel  as  if  I  had  done  the  things,  and  they  have  gone  on 
ever  since  becoming  more  and  more  impersonal  to  me. 
I  don't  know  whether  I  make  myself  quite  clear.  But 
that's  the  way  I  manage  to  stand  it." 

"Yes,  I  see,"  I  said. 

"What  I  had  done  well  seemed  to  become  part  of  the 
great  mass  of  good  work  done  that  belonged  to  nobody 
in  particular." 

"I  don't  know  that  I  should  altogether  like  that,"  I 
demurred. 

Shakespeare  laughed  genially.  "Well,  you  would  if 
you  had  done  much  good  work.  Now  you  want  to  keep 
your  little  own  all  your  own." 

I  was  wondering  what  to  say  when  a  dreadful  inaudible 
voice  struck  upon  my  inner  ear  in  no-tones  of  inexpressible 
tragedy,  "And  the  evil  done,  the  sin,  the  wrong?" 

It  was  Bacon  who  had  joined  us,  speaking  to  Shake 
speare,  and  Shakespeare,  nothing  surprised  at  his  presence, 
unanswered:  "Why,  even  more  the  evil  than  the  good. 
Haven't  you  said,  somewhere" — he  turned  to  me  in  ask 
ing,  and  I  perceived  a  delicate  intention  of  soothing  the 
hurt  to  my  self-love  which  his  snub  had  given — "haven't 
you  said,  somewhere,  that  when  we  own  a  sin,  whether 
to  others  or  to  our  consciences,  we  disown,  it,  and  it  be 
comes  a  part  of  the  general  evil  in  the  world?" 

"Why,  it  seems  to  me  that  I  did  say  that,"  I  answered, 
gratified  to  my  inmost  soul.  "But  how  did  you  know — " 

"Never  mind,  never  mind,"  he  said,  laying  his  hand 

96 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

caressingly  on  my  shoulder.  "Haven't  I  told  you  that 
we  read  everything?  We  have  no  end  of  leisure." 

The  somber  shade  of  Bacon  remained  silently  ignoring 
this  exchange  of  civilities.  At  last  he  said  to  me,  "And 
from  what  experience  of  yours  did  you  learn  that  truth?" 

"Oh,  come!"  Shakespeare  answered,  lightly.  "Isn't 
this  asking?" 

I  stood  recalling  my  many  sins  and  hesitating  which 
I  should  credit  with  the  suggestion  of  my  dark  wisdom. 
"Well,  I  don't  know,"  I  parleyed;  but  I  saw  that  Bacon 
really  cared  nothing  for  my  sins,  and  was  only  thinking 
of  his  own. 

"If  I  could  believe  that!"  he  passionately  declared. 
"No  sinner  ever  made  opener  or  ampler  avowal  of  his 
guilt  than  I  did." 

"You  couldn't  help  it,  my  dear  friend,"  Shakespeare  put 
in,  with  a  smile  which  if  mocking  was  tenderly  mocking. 
"  You  had  been  tried  and  convicted  by  your  peers  before 
you  owned  up.  Your  sin  had  found  you  out,  and  I  fancy 
that  our' brave  moralist  here  means  that  we  must  own  the 
sins  which  haven't  found  us  out  if  we  wish  to  disown 
them.  I  have  come  to  much  the  same  effect  by  not  deny 
ing  mine,  till  now  I  haven't  any  wish  to  deny  them.  But 
why  should  you  continue  to  bother  about  yours?  You 
were  guilty  of  bribery  and  corruption,  but,  as  you  said,  all 
the  other  judges  were.  It  was  a  vice  of  our  epoch,  like 
my  vices,  which  I  was  not  ashamed  of  then,  I'm  now 
ashamed  to  say.  My  comedies  abound  in  the  filth  of 
them,  though  not  so  much  as  some  other  people's  come 
dies;  and  I  dare  say  there  were  judges  more  venal  than 
you.  But  perhaps  it's  the  sin  which  you  didn't  own; 
perhaps  it  was  the  case  of — " 

"Essex?"  the  unhappy  ghost  demanded.  "Haven't  I 
owned  it  to  him  a  thousand  times?  Haven't  I  pursued 
him  through  all  the  timeless  and  spaceless  reaches  of 

97 


THE   SEEN   AND   UNSEEN 

eternity  with  my  unavailing  remorse?  Hasn't  he  for 
given  me,  entreated  me  to  forgive  myself,  with  that  good 
ness  of  his  which  abounded  to  me  in  my  unfriended  need 
with  every  generous  office  of  praise  and  purse,  and  which 
I  repaid  by  hunting  him  to  his  death?  Don't  tell  me  that 
in  a  few  years  he  must  have  died  even  if  I  had  not  slain 
him!  Don't  tell  me  that  so  open  a  rebel  as  he  must  have 
suffered  death,  even  if  I  had  not  shut  the  gates  of  mercy 
on  him.  I,  who  owed  him  far  dearer  and  truer  allegiance 
than  I  owed  that  wretched  old  woman  whom  I  called  my 
sovereign,  and  whom  I  thought  to  serve  to  my  own  glory 
and  profit  by  persecuting  my  friend!" 

Shakespeare  looked  at  him  with  a  curious  kind  of  pity. 
"What  a  tragedy  you  could  have  written!  How  you 
could  have  out-Hamleted  and  out-Macbethed  me!" 

"Why  not  do  it  yet?"  I  appealed  to  them  both.  "I 
am  sure  that  any  of  our  editors  would  be  glad  to  print 
it,  and  it  would  be  only  a  step  from  the  magazine  to  the 
stage.  With  our  improved  psychical  facilities  it  would 
be  easy  to  find  some  adequate  medium — " 

The  abject  spirit's  mood  changed,  and  he  demanded, 
scornfully:  "And  prove  that  I  wrote  ' Hamlet'  and 
'  Macbeth/  too?  No,  thanks.  I  couldn't  do  anything 
to  re-open  that  chapter.  And  if  I  must  say  it,  I  don't 
envy  the  author  of  those  plays  the  gross  and  palpable 
renown  which  he  enjoys  from  them.  I  can  bear  what  I 
must  bear  till  somehow  I  am  released  from  my  burden; 
people  don't  know  how  bad  I  am;  many  never  heard  of 
me  as  a  recreant  friend  or  a  corrupt  magistrate;  they  only 
know  me  as  the  author  of  the  inductive  method,  which 
they  don't  understand,  or  as  the  putative  author  of 
Shakespeare's  plays,  which  they  haven't  read,  not  even 
the  fatuous  thirteen  thousand  Americans  who  annually 
visit  his  Birthplace — the  Birthplace  where  he  first  came 

to  live  after  he  was  a  well-grown  boy!    Of  all  the  hollow 

98 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

unrealities,  of  all  the  juiceless  husks  which  human  vanity 
feeds  on,  literary  glory  seems  to  me  the  emptiest  and  dry- 
est.  If  among  those  thirteen  thousand  Americans,  or  the 
hundred  thousand  other  pilgrims  who  troop  annually  to 
this  supposititous  shrine,  there  were  one  utterly  sincere 
and  modest  soul;  if  in  this  whole  town  of  Stratford  there 
were  one  simple  lower-class  person  who  loved  Shakespeare 
for  himself,  or  cared  for  him,  or  even  knew  of  him,  I  would 
grant  him  some  joy  of  his  swollen  celebrity,  his  Falstaffian 
bulk  of  fame  stuffed  out  with  straw." 

"I  have  thought  of  that,"  I  put  in,  while  Shakespeare 
remained  placidly  smiling.  "  It's  a  point  that  Fve  wanted 
to  test.  We  all  knew  how  the  comfortable  and  cultivated 
people  feel  about  our  great  and  good  friend,  but  I've  been 
curious,  ever  since  I  came  to  Stratford,  to  know  how  peo 
ple  who  are  not  particularly  comfortable  and  not  at  all 
cultivated  feel  about  him.  I  believe  I  have  in  mind  just 
the  person  to  apply  to,"  and  at  my  volition  there  came  a 
sort  of  tremor  such  as  when  the  pictures  change  at  the 
movies,  and  we  were  standing  in  the  little  cluttered  shop 
of  the  kind  woman  who  sold  me  the  plums  for  my  lunches. 

While  she  was  doing  up  the  pound,  half  of  green  gages 
and  half  of  victorias,  which  I  ordered,  I  said:  "Oh,  by 
the  way,  my  friends  and  I  here" — she  stared,  and  I  ex 
plained — "here  in  Stratford,  have  been  wondering  how 
much  the  townspeople,  the  tradespeople,  the  work 
people  really  know  or  care  about  Shakespeare.  What 
do  you  think?" 

"What  do  I — no,  it's  only  sevenpence,  sir;  a  penny 
less  than  for  all  green  gages — what  do  I  think?" 

"Yes.  Do  you  honestly  care  anything  about  Shake 
speare?" 

She  looked  up  a  little  bewildered.  Then  she  said, 
"Why,  how  could  we  live  without  him,  sir?" 

The  ghostly  presence  of  the  poet  laughed  inaudibly 

99 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

out.  "There  you  have  it!  I  am  my  townsmen's  stock 
in  trade,  their  livelihood,  their  job!  They  couldn't  live 
without  me!  Well,  I'm  not  sorry  if  that's  what  I  come 
to  with  them." 

"At  any  rate,  in  that  you  come  to  something  real" 
the  philosopher  assented. 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 


CHAPTER  XIV 

UPON  the  whole  I  was  glad  not  to  have  the  company 
of  the  great  poet  on  the  way  to  Shottery,  whither  we  drove 
that  afternoon.  The  difficulty  of  conversing  with  a  dis 
embodied  spirit  while  driving  with  people  still  of  our 
earthly  minority  is  considerable;  the  lightning  changes 
from  mortal  to  immortal  is  what  ladies  call  nerve-racking; 
and  the  anxiety  not  to  lose  anything  that  such  a  spirit 
as  Shakespeare  might  say  must  result  in  an  inattention 
to  the  others  which  would  seem  impolite  to  say  the  least. 

It  is  an  easy  walk  from  Stratford  to  Shottery,  but  the 
drive  is  still  easier,  and  by  a  road  pleasanter,  I  think, 
than  the  foot-path  across  the  fields  which  Shakespeare 
probably  took  when  he  went  wooing  Anne  Hathaway. 
We  ought  now  to  have  thought  of  that  courtship,  but  if 
the  truth  must  be  told  we  were  amusing  ourselves  un 
worthily  enough  in  counting  up  the  number  of  peram 
bulators  which  so  abound  in  Stratford,  and  which  seemed 
all  to  be  taking  their  way  that  afternoon  to  Shottery,  as 
if  they  too  were  going  to  Anne  Hathaway's  cottage.  I 
forget  how  many  there  were  by  the  time  we  reached  the 
curving  streets  of  the  hamlet,  but  before  we  got  out  of 
Stratford  there  were  twenty-one,  sometimes  with  twins 
in  them,  all  preparing  in  one  way  or  other  to  make  their 
living  off  the  memory  of  their  mighty  townsman;  for  I 
do  not  suppose  there  was  a  baby  among  them  so  ungrateful 
as  to  believe  in  the  Baconian  authorship. 

Shottery  streets  are  curving,  and  of  a  rustic  prettiness, 

101 


THE    SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

with  sincere  Kate  Greenway  cottages  set  practicable  be 
hind  little  gardens,  after  you  get  away  from  the  suburban 
trimness  of  the  houses  nearest  Stratford.  Sincere  and 
practicable  as  the  rest,  with  the  largest  and  brightest  of 
the  little  gardens,  the  Anne  Hathaway  cottage  was  in 
stantly  recognizable  by  the  throngs  of  sight-seers  within 
and  about  its  gates.  The  sight-seers  were  instantly  recog 
nizable,  in  the  vast  majority  as  American  girls,  waiting 
their  turn  in  faintly  sarcastic  patience  to  be  admitted  to 
the  cottage,  and  joking  or  at  least  smiling  together,  at 
other  American  girls  who  packed  its  doorways.  Their 
sarcastic  patience  was  the  national  mood  in  which  we 
Americans  face  most  problems  of  life,  and  it  commended 
them,  somehow,  more  than  the  varying  expression  of  the 
other  visitors  arriving  in  huge  motor-omnibus  loads,  and 
by  carriage  and  automobile  and  on  foot  from  every  part 
of  the  world.  In  a  way  the  spectacle  was  preposterous; 
but  the  afternoon  was  beautiful,  and  the  cottage  stood 
unconscious  amidst  its  flowery  creepers,  looking  gently 
from  its  latticed  windows  at  the  multitude  and  drawing 
its  thatch  over  its  eaves  in  a  sort  of  tolerant  surprise.  In 
its  simple  memories  of  the  courtship  which  had  so  amaz 
ingly  consecrated  it,  one  could  imagine  also  a  dismay  at 
the  outcome,  such  as  poor  Anne  Hathaway  herself  must 
have  felt  if  she  had  been  there.  It  was  her  home  and  her 
people's  home,  and  they  too  might  well  have  been  be 
wildered  at  such  a  far  effect  from  her  marriage  with  the 
rather  wild  young  Shakespeare  lad  whose  family  was  cer 
tainly  no  better  than  hers,  and  who  had  not  behaved  too 
well,  though  as  things  went  in  that  day  and  place  no  worse 
than  many  others.  One  could  fancy  an  irreconcilable 
feeling  in  the  place,  as  the  dense  crowd  pushed  from  room 
to  room,  and  up-stairs  and  down,  and  elbowed  and  gasped 
and  perspired  and  tried  for  some  personal  significance  to 

each  in  their  presence  there.     None  could  have  denied 

102 


'  . 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

that  the  custodians  who  led  from  room  to  room  and  de 
livered  the  crowd  over  from  one  to  another  did  their  in 
telligent  best  to  realize  this  for  them.  For  myself  I  felt 
an  appeal  in  it  which  I  could  not  well  express.  The  de 
cency  of  the  whole  place,  with  the  propriety  of  the  fur 
nishings,  mostly  typical,  of  course,  rather  than  original, 
but  to  me  somehow  recalling  the  simplicities  of  the  new 
American  country  where  I  had  seen  like  things  in  old 
pioneer  dwellings,  was  touching.  It  was  much  to  be 
shown  an  illustrative  rushlight,  and  how,  when  it  was 
crossed,  one  might  burn  the  candle  at  both  ends,  as  the 
proverb  says;  and  it  was  much  to  see  a  rush  bed,  with  the 
mattress  resting  on  the  rope  webbing,  familiar  to  me  from 
the  many  movings  of  my  childhood,  when  the  cords  had 
to  be  trodden  and  tightened  into  a  reluctant  elasticity 
by  the  paternal  foot. 

I  was  expecting  throughout  the  presence  which  it 
seemed  to  me  ought  to  make  itself  sensible,  there,  and  when 
we  came  to  that  room  where  there  is  a  rude  settle  built 
into  the  chimney-place,  and  our  cicerone  said,  "This  is 
where  the  young  people  used  to  do  most  of  their  court 
ing,"  I  felt  in  the  words,  few  and  simple,  the  thrill  of  a 
pathos  imperishable  as  the  soul  itself,  the  richness  of  the 
race's  experience  of  youth  and  love,  not  alienable  by  cir 
cumstance  or  effaceable  by  death  itself. 

"Now,  surely,"  I  thought,  "he  will  act  upon  the  hint," 
but  then  instantly  I  felt  the  vulgarity  of  my  expectation. 
It  was  not  of  Anne  Hathaway,  his  sweetheart,  that  Shake 
speare  would  have  spoken  there  as  he  had  once  spoken  of 
Anne  his  aging  wife;  or  make  this  the  occasion  of  defend 
ing  her  fame  against  his  own.  Doubtless  this  was  his 
tacit  way  of  fulfilling  his  half  promise  to  be  with  me  at 
Shottery;  he  was  making  me  divine  the  case  for  myself. 
I  joined  the  mass  of  humanity  descending  the  stairs  in 
bulk,  and  separating  its  crumpled  particles  in  a  recovered 
8  103 


THE   SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

severally  where  those  American  girls  sat  smiling  ironically 
but  resolutely  waiting  to  appropriate  our  experience. 

In  Shottery  there  is  a  tea-garden  prettily  called  after 
Portia,  and  to  this  we  went  thirsting  for  her  promptest 
brew,  which  was  served  us  in  one  of  her  pleached  bowers 
of  plum-trees  weighed  down  by  their  purple  burden  of 
victorias.  We  found  ourselves  very  hungry  as  well  as 
thirsty,  and  ordered  jam  with  the  bread  and  butter  which 
comes  by  nature  with  tea  in  England;  but  the  jam  was  a 
mistake.  Almost  as  soon  as  it  came  a  swarm  of  yellow- 
jackets  came  and  proposed  sharing  it  with  us.  This  is 
what  the  English  yellow-jackets  always  do;  but  it  seemed 
as  if  the  Portia  kept  swarms  of  them,  to  let  loose  upon 
ignorant  strangers  and  frighten  them  into  surrendering 
the  jam  which  they  have  ordered  and  must  pay  for.  The 
plan,  if  it  was  a  plan,  succeeded  perfectly  in  our  case. 
The  yellow-jackets  swooped  upon  us,  and  we  instantly 
called  to  have  the  jam  taken  away,  but  even  with  the 
removal  of  the  jam  the  yellow-jackets  did  not  go;  they 
remained  humming  and  buzzing,  and  demanding  explana 
tions  which  we  were  not  able  to  give.  Then  they  pos 
sessed  themselves  of  our  bread  and  butter,  and  even  threat 
ened  our  tea,  which  we  had  to  gulp  hastily  and  as  it  were 
by  stealth.  We  feared  they  might  follow  us  to  our  fly, 
but  our  rout  seemed  to  bewilder  them;  and  we  left  them 
darkly  murmuring  in  the  air  above  our  table  after  we 
paid  and  fled. 

"A  little  more  of  this,"  I  said,  as  we  drove  out  of  Shot 
tery,  while  the  over -laden  motorbusses  passed  earth- 
quakingly  by  us,  "a  little  more,  and  I  shall  begin  to  be 
lieve  in  the  Bacon  authorship." 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 


CHAPTER  XV 

THERE  was  a  delicate  touch  of  autumn  in  the  air  that 
revived  my  drooping  faith;  and  the  color  of  the  haws  and 
reddening  leaves  in  the  untrimmed  hedges  consoled;  so 
that  after  a  night's  sleep  we  were  ready  for  the  evidence 
of  the  school  where  Shakespeare  got  his  "small  Latin 
and  less  Greek."  The  row  of  old  timbered  buildings,  low, 
red-tiled,  with  the  second-story  overhang,  stretches  away 
from  the  Guild  Chapel  with  not  much  distinction  between 
the  Grammar  School  and  the  endearing  almshouses  in 
which  one  could  well  desire  to  be  a  pauper  such  as  often 
stood  at  the  doorways  and  looked  so  willing  to  have  us 
come  in. '  We  rashly  put  off  doing  that  till  another  time, 
and  so  never  did  it,  but  we  felt  that  the  place  where  it  is 
so  vigorously  imagined  by  his  biographers  that  Shake 
speare  laid  the  foundations  of  his  versatility  could  not  wait, 
and  we  lost  no  time  at  last  in  visiting  the  school-room 
opening  out  of  the  Guild  Hall  on  the  upper  floor.  In  the 
Guild  Hall  the  heart  of  faith  affirms  that  the  boy  some 
time  came  with  his  father  to  see  the  passing  shows,  which 
made  Stratford  a  one-night  stand  in  those  days,  and  that 
he  studied  or  idled  in  the  school-room  under  a  certain  win 
dow  at  a  desk  now  devoutly  removed  to  the  Birthplace; 
but  there  was  not  much  to  do  with  the  conviction  after 
we  were  possessed  of  it.  Dr.  Furnivall,  in  whom  it  is 
very  strong,  ekes  it  out  in  his  life  of  Shakespeare  with  the 
picturesque  portrayal  of  such  a  school-boy  as  Shakespeare 

would  have  been  if  he  had  been  one;   and  this  may  be 

105 


THE   SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

taken  as  one  of  the  strongest  proofs  of  the  Shake 
spearean  authorship. 

Our  visit  was  tardily  paid  on  one  of  our  very  last  days 
in  Stratford,  and  then  we  said  we  must  go  again  to  Holy 
Trinity  Church,  which  we  had  not  yet  satisfyingly  seen 
because  of  the  crowds  of  mere  sight-seers  infesting  the 
place.  With  such  people  I  felt  that  we  had  nothing  in 
common,  and  it  seemed  as  if  Providence  recognized  our 
difference  in  timing  our  arrival  at  the  churchyard  gate 
just  as  one  large  company  should  be  coming  out  and  no 
other  yet  going  in.  It  was  a  little  bewildering  to  find 
this  departing  company  Germans,  and  personally  con 
ducted  by  an  English-speaking  Japanese. 

"Oh,  stranger  things  than  that  happen  here,"  the  gra 
cious  Shade,  who  greeted  me  at  the  church-door,  said, 
when  I  noted  the  quaint  fact  to  him;  he  was  always  so 
delightfully  modern  in  his  acceptance  of  circumstance. 
He  lingered  outside  a  moment  in  the  sweet,  bright  air 
as  if  his  genial  spirit  could  sense  the  morning's  loveliness 
like  one  still  in  the  body.  "  I'm  particularly  glad  to  meet 
you  to-day  because  I'm  thinking  of  leaving  Stratford  for 
a  while." 

" Leaving  Stratford!"  I  marveled. 

"Yes;  August  is  almost  gone,  and  it  will  be  a  little  dull 
here  after  the  theater  is  closed,  and  the  folk-dancing  and 
singing  is  over,  and  the  lectures  are  all  finished.  Bacon 
is  gone  already." 

"Bacon  gone!"  I  stupidly  repeated. 

"Yes;  he  couldn't  stand  it;  he  felt  that  I  was  becoming 
spoiled  by  the  sickening  adulation,  as  he  called  it." 

"But  you're  not!"  I  protested. 

"No;  and  I  don't  suppose  he  really  believed  it.  The 
fact  is  he  can't  be  away  from  London  for  a  great  while 
when  once  we  return  to  Time.  He  finds  a  greater  con 
course  of  spirits  there,  the  new  arrivals  as  well  as  the  old, 

106 


AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

and  of  course  more  variety.  We  can't  wonder  at  his  pre 
ferring  it." 

"No,"  I  faltered. 

"Besides,  it's  one  of  the  conditions,  you  know,  that  he 
must  visit  Tower  Hill  where  he  brought  Essex  to  his 
death,  and  Westminster  Hall,  where  he  used  to  sit  and 
judge  the  suitors  from  whom  he  had  taken  bribes." 

"Why,  but  I  thought  that  old  notion  of  eternal  pun 
ishment —  Then,  after  all,  there  is  a — " 

"Do  you  call  three  hundred  years  eternal?  Well,  yes, 
there  is  a  sort  of  hell.  But  there  is  no  punishment;  there 
is  only  consequence,  and  there  is  the  relief  of  doing 
penance." 

"And   does   it   last   forever — the   consequence?" 

"How  do  I  know,  with  my  little  three  centuries'  ex 
perience?  I  only  know  that  when  I  meet  Bacon  after  one 
of  these  seasons  of  expiation  he  is  a  great  deal  lighter  and 
cheerfuler,  better  company;  he  isn't  so  censorious,  so 
critical;  not  that  T  ever  minded  criticism  much,  or  do 
now;  especially  as  it's  quite  impossible  to  revise  my  work 
at  this  late  day." 

"Your  editors  are  always  doing  it,"  I  said,  thought 
fully. 

"They're  not  nearly  drastic  enough  for  Bacon.  He 
would  out-Ben  Ben  Jonson  in  blotting.  Sometimes  I 
could  wish  he  had  written  the  plays,"  and  the  amiable 
Shade  laughed  out  his  enjoyment  of  the  notion.  "But 
come!  I'm  keeping  you;  you  want  to  see  the  church." 

"There's  no  hurry,"  I  began,  but  suddenly  the  Shade 
became  a  part  of  the  bright  air,  and  I  turned  to  my  com 
panions.  "Well,  let  us  go  in,"  I  said. 

"No;  we've  seen  it  once  already.  We'll  go  and  walk 
in  the  meadows  along  the  Avon  till  you  come  out." 

I  was  glad  they  had  not  apparently  noticed  anything 
out  of  the  common;  and  I  considered  that  perhaps  the 

107 


THE   SEEN   AND   UNSEEN 

incident  just  closed  had  not  had  more  than  a  dream's 
space  in  its  occurrence. 

Within,  the  light  of  the  church,  strained  through  its 
colored  windows,  was  of  a  brightness  softer  than  that  of 
the  light  outside,  but  still  of  a  very  unwonted  brightness 
in  an  English  church.  There  was  a  sort  of  cheer  in  it 
such  as  ought  always  to  lift  the  heart  in  a  church,  above 
other  places;  it  was  like  the  almost  gaiety  of  an  Italian 
church.  A  few  people  were  going  about  with  their  guide 
books  in  their  hands,  and  staring  round  to  identify  the 
monuments.  But  I  went  directly  up  to  the  chancel 
where  the  Shakespeare  tombs  are,  and  where  there  was 
now  a  kind-looking  verger  dusting  and  brushing.  I  tried 
to  satisfy  the  desire  I  had  for  a  better  acquaintance 
with  the  painted  bust  above  the  poet's  tablet,  which  over 
looks  the  famous  stone  with  its  conditional  malediction 
in  the  floor;  but  after  craning  my  neck  this  side  and 
that  in  vain,  I  ventured  to  ask  the  verger  if  they  ever  let 
people  inside  the  chancel  rail.  Why,  he  argued,  if  they 
let  many  inside,  the  inscriptions  on  the  stones  would  be 
quite  worn  away;  but,  he  relented,  they  sometimes  made 
exceptions  of  those  especially  interested.  Was  I  es 
pecially  interested?  I  tried  to  look  archaeological;  and  he 
lifted  the  barrier,  and  I  stood  among  the  monuments  of 
the  Shakespeare  family,  which  fill  the  whole  space  of 
the  chancel  pavement  in  front  of  the  altar,  with  the  bust 
of  the  poet  looking  over  them  from  its  Jacobean  setting 
in  the  northern  wall.  In  their  presence  one  does  not  es 
cape  the  sense  of  a  family  party,  and  of  a  middle-class 
satisfied  desire  of  respectability  in  their  reunion.  I  real 
ized  there  as  never  before  that  the  Shakespeares  were 
strictly  bourgeois  in  the  whole  keeping  of  their  lives,  and 
in  their  death  there  seems  the  sort  of  triumph  I  have 
intimated.  If  there  wanted  anything  to  this  it  was  sup 
plied  by  the  presence  of  the  good  Doctor  John  Hall, 

108 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

whom  they  doubtless  prized  above  the  poet,  once  a 
stroller  and  at  best  only  a  successful  actor  -  manager. 
He  came  back  indeed  to  Stratford  and  set  up  gentleman 
among  his  town  folks,  who  could  value  him  at  least  for 
his  thrift  and  state.  He  sued  and  was  sued,  he  pleaded  and 
was  impleaded  in  lawsuits  for  the  collection  of  their 
debts  to  him;  as  nearly  as  such  a  world -wide  spirit 
could,  he  led  their  narrow  village  life,  with  an  occasional 
burst  from  it  in  the  revels  which  celebrated  the  visits  of 
his  fellow-players  and  fellow-playwrights  when  they  came 
down  from  London  in  their  love  of  him;  it  was  no  light 
proof  of  their  affection  to  make  the  two  or  three  days' 
journey  over  such  roads  as  they  had  then,  with  footpads 
and  cut-purses  along  the  way.  He  was  then  no  doubt 
a  scandal  to  the  townsfolk,  though  they  too  loved  him  as 
every  one  who  ever  knew  him  did,  but  they  must  have 
prized  him  most  for  his  connection  with  that  honored  phy 
sician.  No  doubt  when  the  doctor  was  laid  away  with  the 
Shakespeares  in  that  venerable  place,  the  neighbors  felt 
that  the  family  had  now  risen  to  be  a  lasting  credit  to  the 
town. 

"If  you  will  step  this  way,"  the  verger  said,  leading 
me  to  a  spot  beyond  the  poet's  bust,  "you  will  see  that 
the  nose  is  aquiline,"  and  so  it  was,  and  the  whole  face 
was  redeemed  from  commonness  by  that  arch.  In  fact  I 
do  not  understand  why  people  should  be  so  severe  on 
this  bust;  I  have  just  called  it  common,  but  it  would  have 
been  impossible  for  Shakespeare  to  look  Shakespeare  if 
Michelangelo  himself  had  modeled  him,  and  it  seems  to 
me  that  this  painted  death-mask  serves  as  well  as  any 
thing  could  to  represent  him. 

It  looks  over,  not  down  on,  the  silly  slab  which  entreats 
and  threatens  the  spectator  concerning  the  dust  below, 
and  across  the  somewhat  complacent  epitaph  of  Mistress 
Hall,  lying  beside  her  husband,  and  the  meeker  monu- 

109 


THE    SEEN   AND    UNSEEN 

ment  of  the  poet's  youngest  daughter  Judith,  and  last 
of  all  the  tomb  of  Anne  Hathaway,  his  wife.  There, 
after  a  moment  of  indignation,  I  was  aware  of  the  im 
mortal  Shade  rising  as  from  its  knees  at  the  foot  of  this 
farthest  stone.  "Oh  no,  oh  no,"  it  read  my  mind,  as 
always,  with  that  gentleness  which  seems  never  to  have 
failed  the  poet  on  earth.  "Susanna  was  a  bright  girl, 
and  a  woman  tender  to  all,  and  the  doctor  was  very  well, 
and  Judith  was  dear  to  me,  too;  but  they  should  have 
put  Anne  nearest  me,  though  I  put  her  so  far  away  in 
life  so  many  years.  It  doesn't  matter  to  us  now,  of  course, 
where  we  have  each  other  forever,  but  here  our  parting 
seems  to  cast  blame  on  her.  They  should  change  my 
bust  and  epitaph  to  this  southern  wall." 

"I'm  glad  you  feel  so,"  I  expressed,  "and  I  like  your 
implying  here,  above  all  places,  that  you  had  not  the 
feeling  which  they  read  into  your  words  about  the  wife 
older  than  her  husband  in  'Twelfth  Night'  and  'The 
Tempest/  and — " 

"Drama,  abstract  truth!"  he  interrupted. 

"And  about  the  jealous  wife  in  the  'Comedy  of  Er 
rors'—" 

"Ah,  I  gave  her  cause,  I  gave  her  cause!"  What 
would  have  been  a  sigh  from  the  shadowy  lips  if  they  had 
had  breath  was  wafted  from  them.  "But  come,  come!" 
he  encouraged  himself.  "We  mustn't  part  so;  I  dis 
owned  my  evil  by  owning  it  to  her,  and  she  forgave  it 
before  I  died,  and  lived  in  love  of  me  as  long  as  I  lived. 
How  strange  it  all  seems — like  things  of  childhood!" 

He  appeared  to  be  following  beside  me  from  the  church. 
"I  should  like  to  say  good-by  in  the  open  air,  in  the  sun," 
he  said;  and  out  there  it  was  as  if  his  wise,  kind  face 
shone  in  it.  "We  sha'n't  meet  again,  I'm  afraid." 

"Why,  are  you—" 

"Yes,  I'm  going  up  to  London,  too.     I  don't  like  to 

110 


AT   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

leave  Bacon  alone  there  a  great  while.  He  gets  so  very 
abjectly  miserable;  I  can  always  help  him  pick  himself  up; 
seeing  me  restores  him  to  his  critical  mood,  to  some  sense 
of  his  superiority,  and  I  want  to  take  him  back  with  me." 

"Back?"  I  echoed. 

"Yes.     To  Eternity,  you  know." 

"Oh!"  I  murmured.  Then  I  hastened  to  say:  "There 
is  one  thing  I  would  like  a  little  more  light  on.  You  said 
a  while  ago  that  there  is  still  consequence — suffering — 
expiation." 

"When  we  revisit  to  Time,  that  is.  But  in  Eternity 
not.  It  is  something  very  difficult  to  explain.  As  I 
said,  there  is  consequence — consequence  of  every  sort,  and, 
if  you  can  understand,  there  is  Correction,  though  there 
is  no  Punishment.  Eternity  is  like  a  long,  impersonal 
dream,  painless  because  selfless.  But  after  an  immeasur 
able  lapse  in  it  we  sometimes  drift  nearer  and  nearer  to 
consciousness,  or  the  wish  to  reindividualize.  It  is  then, 
in  these  awakenings,  that  we  can  return  to  the  borders  of 
Mortality,  of  Time.  We  begin  to  know  ourselves  apart 
from  the  Pardon,  from  the  vast  forgiven  Unity  of  souls 
in  which  we  have  been  lost.  How  can  I  explain?  We 
return  to  ourselves  through  such  pain  and  shame —  No ! 
I  can't  make  you  understand.  But  as  has  been  said,  we 
are  then  '  let  into  our  evils ' — the  evils  of  our  separate  wills 
and  desires,  which  birth  gave  us  and  death  purged  us  of. 
When  one  of  us  spiritual  molecules,  if  I  may  so  express  it, 
comes  to  the  painful  desire  for  separation,  for  return  to 
something  like  mortal  consciousness,  it  is  not  suffered 
to  leave  the  common  Ecstasy  alone ;  some  other  molecule 
must  go  with  it,  but  this  going  is  by  choice,  not  by  ap 
pointment." 

"And  you  chose  to  leave  that  Bliss  and  return  to  our 
sorrowful  earth  with  that  poor  soul!" 

"Eternity  is  merciful;    it  forgives;    it  helps  us  forget; 

111 


THE   SEEN    AND    UNSEEN 

it  forgets  for  us;  but  Time  cannot;  it  is  conditioned  in 
remembrance;  it  must  be  cruel  to  be  kind." 

"  Ah,  now  you  are  speaking  as  I  have  always  hoped  you 
would — Shakespeareanly . ' ' 

"  Would  you  have  liked  me  to  quote  myself?" 

"No,  not  quote  yourself  exactly,  but  express  yourself 
rather  more  in  the  diction  of  the  supreme  poet.  Instead 
of  that  you  have  preferred  the  commonest  sort  of  every 
day  prose.  The  other  sort,  if  I  could  have  reported  our 
conversations  in  it,  would  have  been  more  convincing. 
It  would  have  proved — " 

" That  I  wrote  Shakespeare?  No!  It  would  have  proved 
that  you  did." 

He  laughed  with  that  gentle  gaiety  of  his,  but  began 
now  to  be  a  little  sad. 

I  was  going  to  say  something  more  in  protest,  but  in 
that  instant  the  generous  Shade  became  part  of  the  dim, 
religious  light  of  the  place,  and  I  went  out  of  the  church 
yard  by  the  side  gate,  and  down  past  the  old  mill,  musing 
and  murmuring  beside  its  dam,  and  so  into  the  sunny 
meadows  along  the  Avon. 


THE   END 


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